Tuesday, November 26, 2019

Recording of Controversial Phone Message for Martin Cannon Publicly Available

Former UFO researcher Martin Cannon once published a recording of a disconcerting message reportedly left on his answering machine by the wife of Col. John Alexander. Cannon long asserted the message was left for him by Victoria Lacas Alexander and played it for listeners during the second hour of a 2009 interview conducted by Don Ecker (hear it approximately 30 minutes into the segment). 

"Martin, as an ex-friend I need to warn you John and Hal are really pissed and they're turning it over to Gordon to handle. Watch out," the message states. The apparent caller was interpreted by Cannon and others to be referring to John Alexander, Hal Puthoff and Gordon Novel in the message reportedly recorded in 1993.


Once upon a time in UFO World: Col. John Alexander, Gordon Novel and
Victoria Lacas Alexander


Cannon explained to Ecker that he was familiar with the voice of Lacas Alexander and identified the recording to be her. Ecker concurred that he too believed the message was the voice of Lacas Alexander.

A reader of The UFO Trail brought the 2009 interview to our attention after recently commenting on a 2012 blog post referencing Alexander, Cannon, and the message. Author and researcher George P. Hansen previously explored the circumstances in 2008, stating Cannon called and played him the tape on May 30, 1993, the same day the message was recorded. Hansen added he suggested Cannon alert a number of people in the media, and that Cannon also notified the FBI. While researchers have long known of the reported event, there is much less awareness of the public availability of the recording as pointed out by the blog reader. 

Martin Cannon is best known to the UFO crowd for The Controllers: A New Hypothesis of Alien Abduction, a 1990 work which outlined the possibility some reports of alien abduction may have resulted from misinterpretations of Manchurian Candidate-type covert research projects conducted by the intelligence community on unwitting subjects. However, Cannon later backtracked on the thesis and withdrew from what he at times suggested was an often disorderly and caustic UFO genre. 

The obvious implication is Cannon was being threatened in the phone message, but the specific motives and intentions of the architects of the situation are not entirely clear. Neither is it clear exactly what Alexander and Puthoff were reportedly angry about, and we are left to speculate just what Novel handling it was supposed to entail. 

In addition to the second hour of the interview linked above, the first hour to the show with Don Ecker and Martin Cannon is available for playing. The opening to the show is accessible as well.

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Related:

John Alexander, Contradictions and Unanswered Questions

Influence of the Intelligence Community in Ufology

5 comments:

  1. For what it's worth, I think Cannon's thesis in The Controllers has some merit.

    Although alien abduction became a huge fad in the late 80s and early 90s, likely kicked off by Strieber's NY Times bestseller, Communion, a handful of alleged abductees (not random, but selectively targeted) might have been the unwitting subjects of mind control experiments. I don't think that possibility can be entirely written off.

    However, the lion's share of abduction claims at that time was more likely the result of a form of mass hysteria as well as "met tooism" than actual experience.

    Sigh. Why Cannon walked away from his thesis is another of the open-ended UFO mysteries that will probably never be solved.

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  2. How hard is it to tell what they were angry about?

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    1. What we’re they angry about? Cannon used to be really good friends with Victoria.

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  3. Thanks Jack! I'm working on an episode on The Controllers and this info is really helpful.

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    1. Glad you find it helpful!

      Everybody can check out Aaron J. Gulyas's podcast, The Saucer Life, covering fying saucer history and lore, here:

      https://saucerlife.com/

      Highly recommended!

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