Sleepwalker Project

The **Sleepwalker Project** is a conspiracy theory that alleges there are or were a series of United States government projects conducted at Edwards Air Force Base or Creech Air Force Base around the Las Vegas / Los Angeles area of Southern California and Nevada, for the purpose of developing psychological warfare techniques and organizing exotic research including occult arts. The story of the Sleepwalker Project first became widespread news following the publishing of *The Edwards Expose*, released in 1998 and written by regional newspaper journalist Aaron Henderson. Throughout his article, Henderson explains how he had came into contact with a soldier stationed at Edwards AFB - an as-of-yet unnamed Air Force Colonel - who agreed to act as a whistleblower to the experiments being held at the base. A few direct quotations from the colonel are written down, however, most of the article is comprised of exposition provided by Henderson himself.

As of 2002, the United States government has still refused to respond to claims of Sleepwalker's existence, and most researchers generally regard it as little more than an elaborate hoax concocted by Henderson to jump the ladder and gain employment at a larger news company. Some, however, have connected several unsolved criminal events to the project, with speculators claiming events dating all the way back to 1982 were related to the project.

## Henderson's Article

Aaron Henderson's article can essentially be split into three major parts. Throughout the first part, Henderson attempts to explain the origins of the Sleepwalker Project, through the first-hand information given to him by the colonel, and second-hand information relayed to him by the colonel. As Henderson explains, Sleepwalker originated under the wider umbrella of MK-Ultra, and was created with the specific purpose in mind of creating obedient soldiers who lacked the hesitation, morality, and fear of normal enlistees. Several techniques were explored throughout the project's history, including non-consensual drug usage (as is now considered MK-Ultra's foremost modus operandi), hypnosis, subliminal messaging, psychosurgery, electroconvulsive therapy, and sensory deprivation. No names are provided as to who were the primary military and scientific leaders behind Sleepwalker, but in the colonel's own words, the project and its goals were known up to the highest branches of government, who saw it as a means to an end in the wider context of the Cold War.

The second part of the article attempts to explain the methodology of the researchers involved in Sleepwalker, through the colonel's own words and some assumptions made by Henderson. Psychoactive drugs were first used in the project in attempts to eliminate a soldier's hesitation and fear, the most successful of which were benzodiazepines. Psychostimulants such as cocaine and methamphetamine were also used to amplify a soldier's aggression, however, in most cases the soldiers became uncontrollable and ignored the orders given to them when in altered states of consciousness. As a result, drugs were declared too unpredictable and unreliable to fit the mission parameters of Sleepwalker, and testing continued through the use of hypnosis. As the article explains, however, little information about the success or failure of the hypnosis line of experimentation could be gained. The same is true for the lines of experimentation revolving around subliminal messaging, ECT, and sensory deprivation. The only other line of experimentation explained in-depth by the article was the project's attempts at modernizing psychosurgery, particularly on unwilling prisoners of the nearby California City Correctional Facility, a low security prison just north of Edwards Air Force Base. The researcher's attempts ultimately proved fruitless as expected, as the brain proved too complex for the removal of certain sections to have any testable, repeatable affect.

The third and final part of the article is Henderson and the colonel's joint attempt at connecting the project to various events and missions conducted by the CIA post-1982, which is when the colonel claims the first Sleepwalker operatives were used. Henderson provides little confessional or forensic evidence to back up the various claims he makes throughout this part of the article, and relies almost entirely on circumstances to explain his connections. Henderson's claims include Sleepwalker involvement in the Invasion of Grenada (1983), the Invasion of Panama (1989), the Gulf War (1991), Operation Uphold Democracy (1994), and the recent War in Afghanistan (2001).

## See Also

* CIA Activities in the United States
* Allegations of CIA Drug Trafficking
* Human Rights Violations by the CIA
* List of CIA Operations