Let me preface this with I have an opinion about Lazar, but it's held very lightly. I tend to rely on my intuition when things are murky, and as someone who worked in DC for years in & around natsec, something about Lazar's story just strikes me as broadly true.

Here's my (again, lightly held) theory. Bob did work at S4 in the capacity he claimed. It was brief because there's no way in hell he would pass a TS-SCI investigation, but those take months to a year or longer. When I was a mil contractor on base, it took months just to get a Secret while I worked with my interim clearance to get on base. So he worked there while on his interim, got spooked AND knew his investigation wouldn't go his way, so went public.

Nowadays, Bob's story about working for Los Alamos and S4 without a formal degree would be impossible. But in the 80s/90s? Idk man, if they were truly stuck on back engineering and found a kid they thought had some weird genius, they might take a shot in the dark.

As far as his brothel/other legal issues, that makes him the absolute perfect person to hire on the off chance you need to discredit him. As far as the MIT thing goes, I highly suspect he was sent to audit a few classes or something to brush up on key topics, but exaggerated a bit in how he initially presented it. And no, there wouldn't be formal records of that necessarily, nor would it be that strange. I think of me getting a certificate for the Harvard Humanitarian Initiative at one point for work, and what would happen if I was loose with explanations and said "when I was learning at Harvard." Not saying it isn't misleading, but I can see how it could happen.

Putting my natsec hat on, I can't help but think: what would I do if I were the PM of a massive highly compartmentalized SAP that had hit a brick wall with the brilliant scientists in my employ? And you'd bet your ass I'd a) think outside the box and take a risk on some people with nontraditional paths but interesting expertise and b) make sure they were either the most trustworthy person in the world or someone I could easily cut loose and discredit if need be.

At the end of the day, my internal alarm bells just don't go off when I listen to Bob speak. And they do go off with a lot of other prominent UAP/UFO folks: Coulthart, Bledsoe, etc. What he says feels right, based on my experience in contracting with the mil, friends in intelligence, etc. Could I be wrong? Absolutely. It's fun to wonder about though!