The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) Director Kash Patel announced on May 16th that the FBI headquarters will be moving out of the J. Edgar Hoover Building in the nation’s capital, Washington D.C. Additionally, 1500 agents will be stationed across various offices nationwide.
Patel stated that the current FBI headquarters is neither secure nor up to the standards of a top law enforcement agency.
In an interview with Fox News’ “Sunday Morning Futures” program, Patel said, “The FBI will be vacating the Hoover Building because it’s not secure for our employees. We want… if you’re going to come work for the premier law enforcement agency in the world, we’re going to give you a building that’s commensurate with that, and this is not it.”
The interview is set to air on Sunday, May 18th.
Patel also mentioned during the interview, “The FBI has a capacity of 38,000 personnel. While we are not at that capacity currently, within a 50-mile radius of D.C., there are 11,000 FBI employees. That’s almost a third of the FBI’s workforce, and the crime here is not a third (of nationwide crime), so we will be deploying the headquarters’ 1500 personnel elsewhere.”
He added, “Every state will see increased staffing. I think when we do that, it inspires Americans to be intelligence analysts and agents. They will say, ‘We want to go work for the FBI because we want to combat violent crime, and we want to be sent all over the country to do that.’ That’s what we’re going to be working on over the next 3 to 9 months.”
Over the past decade, the FBI and the General Services Administration (GSA) have made multiple attempts to find a new headquarters location, but none were successful.
By the end of 2023, a site in Greenbelt, Maryland was selected for the new FBI headquarters, with a smaller facility in Washington to accommodate 750 to 1000 personnel. However, the chosen location sparked controversy. Former director Christopher Wray raised concerns about potential conflicts of interest.
Production Team of News Insight