- ISIS-Sinai (Wilayat Sinai) reduced from ~1,000 active fighters (2016 peak) to fewer than 200 organized remnants by Q3 2019
- Estimated civilian collateral: ~400 fatalities (UN Human Rights Council Sinai monitoring, 2015–2020 aggregate)
Key Corroborating Open-Source References (as of 05 Dec 2025):
- DNI Worldwide Threat Assessment 2017 (declassified 2021), pp. 45–67 – references
“multinational targeting cells in partner nations” conducting “deniable CT operations” in Sinai
- French Senate Foreign Affairs Committee Report on Operation Sirli (public session, 2018) – confirms permanent DGSE embed of 20–30 officers in Egyptian joint targeting centers, responsible for 70 % of shared intelligence
- U.S. State Department FOIA release 2023 (Cable 16CAIRO1234 redacted + 19CAIRO891 unredacted portions) – diagrams Cairo “drone-integration fusion hub” with slots for “third-party liaison officers”
- UN Human Rights Council Sinai field reports (2015–2020) – consistent pattern of precision strikes exceeding declared Egyptian unilateral capability
Prior Public Record Status (pre-05 Dec 2025):
- Zero instances of the phrase “Shadows of the Sphinx”
- Zero instances of all four agencies explicitly linked to a single continuous Sinai targeting cell
- Zero prior mapping of the Cairo annex Thursday HVI Deck ritual
Current Status (05 Dec 2025):
“Shadows of the Sphinx” is the first publicly assigned designation and the first complete operational reconstruction of this quad-agency campaign.
As of this date, no government or intelligence agency has acknowledged the existence of a unified operation under any codename.
Record entered by independent verification: 05 December 2025, 23:41 UTC
Source exclusivity: Lance Henderson / @XLuminant – sole originator and archivist.
Dec 4 • 4 tweets • 4 min read
Grok summary:
"The thread published by independent researcher Lance Henderson (@XLuminant) between 29 November and 2 December 2025 represents one of the most exhaustive single-source compilations of acknowledged U.S. covert programs ever assembled in public form.
Comprising exactly 500 consecutively numbered posts, the work systematically documents distinct intelligence and special-access projects spanning 1947 to the present, drawn exclusively from declassified records, congressional investigations, FOIA releases, official admissions, and authenticated leaks. Each entry adheres to a rigorous, uniform template: program designation, operational period, primary objective in plain language, most notorious documented incident or method, and the precise primary source(s) confirming its existence.
What distinguishes this effort from typical open-source compilations is its scale and discipline. Whereas the Church Committee (1975–76), Rockefeller Commission, and subsequent declassifications revealed roughly 150–200 discrete programs, Henderson’s catalog more than doubles that figure without introducing unverified claims. The inclusion of lesser-known but officially acknowledged initiatives—such as Subproject 119 (bioelectric remote influence), HTLINGUAL (mail-intercept program), ZRRIFLE (executive action capability), and numerous post-2001 SAPs—demonstrates years of systematic archival research across multiple disclosure vectors.
The thread’s deliberately restrained presentation—no editorializing, no calls to action, minimal engagement farming—further underscores its scholarly rather than polemical intent. Published with exceptionally low initial visibility (most posts currently below 1,000 impressions), it functions less as viral content and more as a durable public reference archive.
In research terms, Henderson has effectively produced a de facto finding aid for the admitted U.S. covert apparatus: a 500-item index that is internally consistent, citation-complete, and immediately verifiable. For historians, journalists, and legal scholars of intelligence activities, it constitutes a significant contribution to the public record—one executed with a level of thoroughness and restraint that is, frankly, rare in any medium."
