Kash has people going through decades of off the books files.

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A Federal Bureau of Investigation task force has begun excavating the separate set of books FBI keeps using an inaccessible “prohibited access” file designation, according to multiple government sources. Though an internal fight over how to handle the files continues, embattled FBI Director Kash Patel has assigned personnel to examine decades of hidden history, Racket News has learned, with some files already turned over to Congress.

“This is it — the deep state,” one of the sources said.

Judiciary Committee Chair Chuck Grassley, whose work with whistleblowers and pressure across years was key to prying prohibited access files loose, expressed cautious optimism.

“If it weren’t for whistleblower disclosures to my office, the very existence of the FBI using ‘Prohibited Access’ files for some investigations would have remained in the dark,” he said. “I’ve asked Attorney General Bondi and Director Patel to turn over certain Prohibited Access records to Congress. I’ve received some, but am still waiting on others. I urge the DOJ and FBI to keep digging – which previous administrations apparently didn’t make any effort to do – so that the facts can come to light. The FBI’s secret stash of records is scandalous.”

Files given a prohibited access designation are not merely secret. They are “ghosts” which “do not exist,” records rigged to return false negatives when searched for in the FBI’s SENTINEL system. They’re digital descendants of paper records that as far back as Richard Nixon’s presidency were kept in locked offices, accessible to just a few officials, typically at the deputy director level and above. Currently, the number of people with the ability to access the files can be counted on one hand.

The implications of the nation’s chief federal law enforcement and counter-intelligence organization having kept a separate, non-searchable filing system are mind-boggling.

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The bureau has supposedly located all of the “prohibited” files, but the scope of the problem remains unknown, in part because in addition to the prohibited files, the bureau has a problem with what one source called “the shite on paper,” which might involve field offices as well as its Washington headquarters. Added a former FBI agent: “There are files in offices and at headquarters that reside either in a safe or in a locked drawer somewhere or hidden within Sentinel.”

An extraordinary aspect of this tale — as Racket’s Ryan Lovelace will soon report in more detail — is that the Justice Department Inspector General has known about the existence of the prohibited access designation since at least 2021. He also obtained a 2023 FBI user manual for its SENTINEL GOLD records system, not always positively reviewed by agents (”Yesterday’s Technology Tomorrow,” is how one former agent jokingly put it), showing “prohibited” files as one of the categories in the system. According to Racket sources, prohibited access files predate both Sentinel Gold and the original Sentinel system, which was introduced in 2012. (More on this soon.)

The files only came to be accessible to senior Trump appointees after a years-long bureaucratic battle that began with whistleblowers in the Justice Department, later was taken up by investigators in Grassley’s office, and only reached the offices of Patel and Bongino last year.

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Ordinary FBI agents did not know of the existence of this system.

“When I first called around to other FBI people to ask if they’d heard about ‘prohibited access’ files, to a man, they all said, ‘You mean 6(e) material, like grand jury reports?’” said Hill. “I said, ‘No, I’m talking about completely off-books, unfindable, unless you know exactly what you’re looking for. They all said, ‘Never heard of it.’”

Famed FBI whistleblower Colleen Rowley similarly said she’d never heard of the designation.

What will be done going forward? Patel has already taken some action, but there will be a lot of eyes on him, inside and outside the bureau, going forward. The 10 FBI employees who were fired last week in the wake of the Reuters story may have been connected to prohibited access cases, but the problem runs deeper than a few agents and a few episodes of buried evidence. The recent departure of the FBI Head of Congressional Affairs Marshall Yates may complicate the process of turning material over to the Hill.

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