A Tall Tale: Steve Quayle, L. A. Marzulli and the "Giant of Kandahar"

I don’t make a habit of reading World Net Daily, but the news aggregator site has a prominent place in the world of conservative opinion. It was therefore a bit surprising to find that WND, as it styles itself, ran a lengthy article repeating L. A. Marzulli’s claims about the U.S. military capturing a living giant in Afghanistan and transporting the monster to Ohio. (The article, as you will see below, is a summary of a YouTube broadcast from earlier this week.) The details have changed in the telling since gigantologist Steve Quayle began flogging the story at least as far back as 2005.

On November 7, 2005, Quayle appeared on Coast to Coast AM and alleged that he had received an email from an anonymous U.S. Air Force officer claiming that the Air Force had discovered a giant in Afghanistan in March 2005 and transported the 12 or more foot tall, 1,100-pound creature to a “secret” base in Europe. It allegedly had six finger on each hand and six toes on each foot, as well as a powerful odor. One version of the story, the one told on radio, according to Coast to Coast episode summaries posted online, claimed that the giant had been recently killed in Afghanistan.
 
A second version, which cropped up online, claimed that the giant had been discovered in an ancient tomb, buried with artifacts and weapons. This version seems to have been contaminated by additional and possibly separate material from Quayle’s Genesis 6 Giants website, which features a photograph of an Air Force officer from the middle twentieth century standing beside sheet-draped artifacts, claiming that it is the tomb of a giant.
 
According to their assertion of copyright, shortly after the initial flap Quayle and co-author Duncan Long quickly produced a novel, called LongWalkers: Return of the Nephilim, which was explicitly a work of fiction about the U.S. military’s supposed involvement with Nephilim. The book carries a copyright date of 2006 and 2008, though they did not register the copyright with the U.S. Copyright Office. In other words, the order of events suggests that the story began as publicity for Quayle’s attempt at a novel, especially since no evidence for the claim has ever emerged.
 
To promote the book, Quayle said that he included in it what he claimed was the Air Force officer’s email to him, now described as a “personal letter,” perhaps because in the intervening months he had learned that the U.S. military has extremely strict email protocols and sending information about allegedly classified operations to a third party would have been a serious breach, and revealing “secret” information via email is a criminal offense. The letter does not appear in the book’s table of contents, but I do not have a physical copy of the novel to review.
 
Quayle returned to the story on Coast to Coast AM in December 2008, where the story had mutated. During this appearance, Quayle had with him a pilot who refused to identify himself. He claimed that the military loaded the body of the giant into an aircraft and took it not to Europe but to Ohio. Quayle used the opportunity not to press for evidence but to shill for his novel.
 
When Quayle retold the story on The Rundown Live in 2015, the details were different yet again. This time, the story alleges that the U.S. military has a top-secret gigantology unit. Unlike the earlier account of whisking the giant to Europe or even Ohio, Quayle alleged in 2015 that the Air Force officer personally killed the giant, who has now shrunk to just 9-12 feet tall, and destroyed all evidence of its existence on government orders. (Perhaps he thinks whisking it away is destroying evidence? It’s unclear.)
 
At this point, L. A. Marzulli stepped in to take over the story and add it to his cabinet of curiosities in the Watchers series of DVDs. Marzulli discussed the story on his YouTube TV series this week.

However, Marzulli’s version of the story is different yet again. In the DVD, excerpted in the YouTube broadcast, he interviews an unnamed man who claims to be the officer who encountered the giant. This time, the story takes place in 2002, immediately after the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan, and the encounter was not with the Air Force but with the U.S. Army Special Forces unit. According to this version of events, the giant was now 12-15 feet tall and was killed by gunfire from a full Special Forces unit. The soldier alleges that the giant killed a Special Forces member named “Dan” with a pike.
 
A second soldier, who claims to know the story only secondhand, gave still different details: the giant becomes “three times” the size of a man (15-19 feet), and the “Special Forces” unit that chanced upon the giant becomes a “special unit” tasked with giant hunting. This soldier was Marzulli’s chauffeur and refused to give his name.
 
According to U.S. Army records, only one service member named Dan was killed in Afghanistan in 2002. He was killed along with several other soldiers in an accident in Kandahar when confiscated rockets exploded.
 
Sure, the death of the fictitious “Dan” could have been covered up by a conspiracy, but at some point you have an actual claim that a real person is dead. To help “prove” their story Quayle and Marzulli might have tried to find this dead person and demonstrate that he (a) existed, (b) died, and (c) was killed in action in Afghanistan. They did not make even rudimentary efforts to confirm the tale.
 
Instead, Marzulli ranted about conspiracies: “If there are fifteen or eighteen footers roaming the Earth and our military has brought them down, we have a right as American citizens to know about it. I mean, this isn’t classified military stuff. This is something we need to know. And it points back to the biblical prophetic narrative.”
 
It isn’t classified? How, pray tell, if we credit you with even a hint of truth, do you know that?
 
The soldier alleges that he had to sign a non-disclosure agreement with the military, which is weird since the military could simply classify the event and prevent any military personnel from speaking of it. According to the Army, non-disclosure agreements, standard form 312, are used for private contractors who receive access to classified information. By law, non-classified information is, by definition, free to be discussed. [Update: As you can see from the comments below, NDAs are used with some classified material within the Army.] 
 
Marzulli and the soldier allege that the story—which, I remind you, involves the death of an actual person who could, in theory, be proven to exist—has been covered up to protect Darwinian evolution from Christianity since, in his mind, it would be impossible for “giants” to have evolved. Tall creatures like the giraffe and diplodocus and Gigantopithecus would probably disagree. The soldier, needless to say, is a Christian who disagrees with evolutionary biology and therefore has more than a little motive for making up a story that, I must say again, has absolutely no physical or documentary evidence to support it.
 
WND concluded its article by directing readers to purchase the Watchers DVD from the “WND Superstore,” where WND receives a royalty on each unit sold.
 
Finally, I should briefly acknowledge the Xplrr Media video presentation that ran last night. The minor fringe historian behind it had made vulgar claims for what the video would do, and I went into it expecting high comedy from what seemed to have been billed as a parody. Instead, it left me confused and a bit bleary-eyed since the video was a Dutch-angle shot of a laptop screen broadcasting a blurry image. The video claimed that “the truth” about prehistory was suppressed in 325 CE, presumably at the Council of Nicea (though no one told the Arabs!), and the speaker made several strange claims. However, it seems that the kindest thing is to say nothing, since to do otherwise would be to vindicate his belief that “academics” are lying in wait to attack him. In truth, he offered nothing of interest.
 
My policy has always been to devote my time and energy, where possible, to examining people and claims that command large audience and media attention, because those are the topics that are important to address. In keeping with that I will continue to cover Scott Wolter, a frequent media figure with a significant following, but I have no plans to further discuss his business partner unless or until he makes a newsworthy claim.