ABC News: Russian governor alien abduction victim

God bless journalist Alexander Marquardt of ABC News. The guy is an accomplished reporter who has covered U.S. presidential elections and is now based in Moscow as a correspondent.  But for right now, he is most known for his alien politician story.

Marquardt reported yesterday about the strange story of Kirsan Ilyumzhinov - the wealthy chess champion and Russian governor of the Buddhist Republic Kalmykia shown here - who revealed on TV last week he was an alien abductee. Ilyumzhinov claims he was taken from his Moscow apartment to a space ship where aliens communicated with him telepathically. He added the aliens weren't ready to reveal themselves to humanity, but were willing to show him around the ship and to let him leave. Ilyumzhinov also claims he has three eyewitnesses to the event.

As if that's not juicy enough to make it into mainstream network new, ABC also reports Russian parliamentarian Andrei Lebedev wants Ilyumzhinov interrogated by President Dmitry Medvedev. Lebedev made a written request to the president and expressed concerns that Ilyumzhinov may dished to the aliens on secret information, and wonders how much the governor told the aliens about his job. Lebedev also wonders how Ilyumzhinov's visit has affected the governor’s ability to perform his duties.

So not only is it interesting, and a nice chunk of paranormal pop culture, that a politician is claiming to be an abductee and that other members of his government believe/suspect him and that the Russian head-of-state may get involved, but this has picked up traction in the mainstream media and become big news - and is unfortunately the largest story poor Alexander Marquardt will likely ever cover.

On the upside, maybe Marquardt will at least get a cool alien abduction lamp as a gift from Ilyumzhinov for his troubles.