KLAS-TV

KLAS-TV is the CBS-affiliated television station on channel 8 in Las Vegas, Nevada. The 1984 TV Factbook gives July 8, 1953 as the date it began operation.¹ Its owner through 1968 was Hank Greenspun, publisher of the Las Vegas Sun. Howard Hughes bought it in 1968, and after his death the estate sold it to Landmark Communications in 1978. Landmark agreed to sell it to Nexstar Broadcasting Group in 2014. The station's best-known reporter is George Knapp, whose UFO coverage began with a 1989 series on Bob Lazar.

Greenspun ownership, 1953 to 1968

The 1984 Factbook lists the licensee as KLAS Inc., with Landmark Communications holding 100 percent ownership.¹ Trade press from 1967 identifies the licensee as Las Vegas Television Inc. In October 1967 an application for FCC approval of the sale of KLAS-TV by H. M. Greenspun to the industrialist Howard R. Hughes was on file, at a price of about $4.5 million. Greenspun gave financial difficulties as his reason for selling. He cited losses from a fire that destroyed the Las Vegas Sun building in 1964. The same report describes Hughes as having been acquiring hotels and properties in Las Vegas during the preceding year. The application showed that as of June 30, 1967 Las Vegas Television Inc. had total assets of $979,282 and a net loss of $6,735 for the six months then ended, that the original cost of land, buildings, tower, antenna, transmitter and other properties was $1,091,969, and that Mark Smith would be retained as station manager. The report states that Hughes Tool Company owned four Las Vegas hotels and casinos, the Sands, Desert Inn, Castaways and Frontier.²

Hughes ownership, 1968 to 1978

Broadcasting reported on February 19, 1968 that the FCC had approved the transfer. The item gives the price as $3,650,000 in cash plus the assumption of obligations, which it estimated would bring the total to about $4.5 million. The buyer is named as Howard R. Hughes, identified as president and owner of Hughes Aircraft Company, which held 21 percent of Teleprompter Corporation, and as the owner of Hughes Tool Company and of real estate in the Las Vegas area.³ The 1984 Factbook records the FCC approval as February 14, 1968, with the buyer named as Hughes Tool Company.¹ The two records name the buyer differently, and both appear here.

The station passed through the Hughes estate after his death in 1976. Broadcasting reported in its issue of February 13, 1978 that KLAS-TV was sold by Summa Corporation to Landmark Communications for a price said to be in excess of $8 million. It identified the seller as owned by the estate of Howard Hughes, with William R. Lummis as executor of the Hughes Nevada interests, and identified Landmark's largest stockholder and chairman as Frank Batten, with Landmark owning WTAR-AM-TV and WKEZ(FM) in Norfolk, Virginia, and publishing the Ledger-Star and Virginian-Pilot there.⁴ The FCC filing reported in Broadcasting on March 27, 1978 sought assignment of the license from Summa Corporation to KLAS Inc. for $9,587,500; it states that since the death of its sole stockholder, Howard R. Hughes, the estate had been divesting broadcast interests, and that KLAS-TV was the only broadcast station in the estate.⁵ The FCC approved the estate's sale of the station on May 15, 1978.¹ The Ninth Circuit's opinion of December 27, 1977 in a defamation suit by Robert Maheu captions the defendant as Hughes Tool Company, now named Summa Corporation, and describes Hughes as the sole owner of Summa.⁶

Knapp's report "How KLAS-TV became a part of Howard Hughes' empire," posted July 18, 2018 as the station marked 65 years in southern Nevada, states that the money Hughes spent in Las Vegas is how he purchased Channel 8 in 1968.⁷

Robert Maheu, a former FBI agent, ran Hughes's Nevada operations. He contracted through his own company to manage the hotels, casinos and other properties that Hughes acquired in Las Vegas after November 1966.⁸ The FCC approval and trade press name Hughes and Hughes Tool Company as the buyer.²³

The Senate Select Committee on Presidential Campaign Activities later recorded Greenspun's name in connection with Hughes interests. Jeb Stuart Magruder testified that John Mitchell suggested as additional targets the chairman of the Democratic National Committee, Larry O'Brien, and Greenspun, whom Magruder described as a Las Vegas publisher who allegedly had explosive material damaging to Senator Muskie in his office safe.⁹ The report also states that Robert Bennett suggested that Greenspun's safe contained information of interest to both Hughes and the Committee for the Re-election of the President.¹⁰ These statements date to 1972, four years after Greenspun sold KLAS-TV.

Landmark and Nexstar ownership

Landmark Communications held the station from 1978, and in 1984 held 100 percent of the licensee.¹ The seller named in the 2014 announcement was Landmark Media Enterprises, LLC.¹¹ Nexstar's annual report for 2014 states that on February 13, 2015 it completed the acquisition of the outstanding equity of KLAS, LLC, the owner of KLAS, for $145.0 million in cash, subject to working capital adjustments, from Landmark Television, LLC and Landmark Media Enterprises, LLC.¹²

On November 21, 2014 Nexstar Broadcasting Group announced in an 8-K press release that it had entered into a definitive agreement to acquire the equity interests and assets of KLAS-TV from Landmark Media Enterprises for $145.0 million plus working capital.¹¹ Nexstar's chief executive Perry Sook stated that the purchase price was less than 6.0 times the average 2015 and 2016 pro-forma projected cash flow, including expected synergies.¹¹ An exhibit to a Nexstar 8-K for January 21, 2015 (filed January 22) describes the transaction, under the defined term "Las Vegas Acquisition," with total consideration of $145.0 million.¹³ Trade press dated the announcement November 21, 2014.¹⁴

The FCC public file for the station lists facility ID 35042 and identifies the licensee as Nexstar Media Inc., at 3228 Channel 8 Drive in Las Vegas.¹⁵

The I-Team

The station biography for Knapp states that he has been chief reporter of the Channel 8 I-Team investigative unit since 1995.¹⁶ The station launched the Mystery Wire website on November 6, 2019 as an archive of its UFO, Area 51 and military program coverage, on the thirtieth anniversary of the first part of the 1989 Lazar series.¹⁷ KLAS ran Knapp and Matt Adams reports on the Pentagon's aerospace threat program under the "I-Team Exclusive" label in 2018.¹⁸¹⁹

George Knapp's reporting

Knapp joined KLAS in 1981 as a general assignment reporter, after working as a part-time studio cameraman and production assistant at KLVX-TV, Channel 10, according to the station biography.¹⁶

The 1989 Bob Lazar series

A 2026 KLAS report on Lazar describes a live Knapp interview in May 1989 with a man in silhouette, which it calls a bombshell that launched a push for disclosure, and says the public learned Lazar's name months later.²⁰ On November 6, 1989 KLAS aired the first part of a nine-part series titled "UFOs: The Best Evidence." The station's 2019 retrospective describes it as the highest rated local news series ever aired in Las Vegas, and in it Knapp said the station spent nearly 8 months putting the original series together.¹⁷

Knapp testified in 2025 that after he appealed on the air for people with knowledge of the program to contact him, more than two dozen sources spoke to the station. He wrote that six people who spoke with him by telephone in the newsroom were visited the next day by government agents or security personnel from former employers, who in his account told them to keep quiet. He wrote that someone had been listening to the phone in his office.²¹

Skinwalker Ranch and the National Institute for Discovery Science

In his 2023 statement to Congress Knapp wrote that he first met Robert Bigelow in 1989 in connection with the subject, and that Bigelow created the National Institute for Discovery Science (NIDS) in 1996 with a science advisory board of academics and former astronauts.²² Internet Archive captures of the NIDS site from December 2000 and December 2001 list a science advisory board that included Edgar Mitchell, Hal Puthoff, Jessica Utts and Jacques Vallee, with John B. Alexander among the staff.²³

Knapp is credited on two books about the Skinwalker Ranch reporting. Hunt for the Skinwalker (2005, Paraview Pocket Books) is catalogued under the name of Colm Kelleher alone, while a 2017 audiobook edition credits Kelleher, Knapp and David Bendena.²⁴ Skinwalkers at the Pentagon (2021, independently published) lists James Lacatski, Kelleher and Knapp as authors.²⁴ The Black Vault obtained records showing that the manuscript was submitted to the Defense Office of Prepublication and Security Review in March 2020 and cleared as amended on May 11, 2021, with changes concerning personally identifiable information and the names of certain government employees.²⁵

The AAWSAP and AATIP reporting, 2017 to 2018

Knapp's account of the program starts from the December 2017 New York Times story on the Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program (AATIP). In his 2023 statement he wrote that the story was accurate in many respects but wrong in stating that $22 million secured by Reid, Daniel Inouye and Ted Stevens funded AATIP. In his account the money went to the Advanced Aerospace Weapon System Applications Program (AAWSAP), a Defense Intelligence Agency program initiated and managed by Lacatski, whose contract was awarded to a subsidiary of Bigelow Aerospace Advanced Space Studies.²²

On June 28, 2018 KLAS posted a Knapp and Adams report on a letter of June 24, 2009 from Senator Harry Reid to Deputy Secretary of Defense William Lynn. The report states that the letter described the study as focused on "advanced aerospace threats and disruptive aerospace technologies," said it was already a success, and was copied to only 14 people. Luis Elizondo told the station that the letter was legitimate.¹⁸ The letter was released by DIA to The Black Vault and is written on the letterhead of the Majority Leader.²⁶ A second Knapp and Adams report, first aired on July 25, 2018, described a presentation by Hal Puthoff, chief scientist of that company, in June 2018 as the first public presentation about the study.¹⁹

The Black Vault's FOIA records show that DIA released the contract records for Contract HHM402-08-R-0211 on October 13, 2022, with 13 pages withheld in full.²⁷ A KLAS report of March 27, 2026, credited to John Forest and Knapp, states that Reid, Inouye and Stevens began the study in 2007 and that it cost $22 million in total.²⁸

The May 2022 report on the UAP Task Force

On May 23, 2022 at 9:12 p.m. Pacific time KLAS posted Knapp's report on the UAP Task Force, under the headline "More UFO hearings? Congress might consider hearing from these 2 men." The report stated that in January 2021 Jay Stratton "was surprisingly transferred out of the job" and that Stratton "has never spoken publicly about his work and is not commenting now."²⁹ On October 13, 2022 KLAS posted a further Knapp report on Radiance Technologies, headlined "Is this company working with alien technology in Nevada?"³⁰

Congressional statements

On July 26, 2023 the House Committee on Oversight and Accountability held a hearing titled "Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena: Implications on National Security, Public Safety, and Government Transparency." The printed record lists a "Statement for the Record, by George Knapp; submitted by Rep. Tim Burchett."³¹ On September 9, 2025 Knapp appeared before the Task Force on the Declassification of Federal Secrets at a hearing titled "Restoring Public Trust Through UAP Transparency and Whistleblower Protection." His written statement identifies him as chief investigative reporter for KLAS-TV.²¹³²