Kash Patel Unveils Plans To Move FBI Out of Despised Downtown D.C. Headquarters: Will Old HQ Become ‘Museum of the Deep State’?
The FBI will be moving agents out of its “unsafe,” brutalist Washington, D.C., headquarters and dispersing them across the bureau’s 55 field offices, according to Director Kash Patel.
“The FBI is leaving the Hoover Building because this building is unsafe for our workforce,” Mr. Patel told a Fox Business anchor, Maria Bartiromo, in a taped interview with a FBI deputy director, Dan Bongino, set to air on Sunday.
It’s unclear where the new headquarters will be situated. FBI insiders expect a new, smaller headquarters to be established in the D.C. suburbs, with many agents who now work at headquarters being moved to satellite offices across the country.
Fifteen-hundred agents currently work at the J. Edgar Hoover Building on Pennsylvania Avenue. An unspecified number of them will now be relocated to field offices throughout the country sometime within the next three to nine months.
“Every state’s getting a plus-up,” Mr. Patel said.
“In the National Capital Region, in the 50-mile radius around Washington, D.C., there were 11,000 FBI employees. That’s like a third of the workforce. A third of the crime doesn’t happen here. So we’re taking 1,500 of those folks and moving them out,” Mr. Patel said.
Mr. Patel has been focused on unwinding an FBI that, its critics say, became too Washington-centric under two longtime directors, Robert Mueller and James Comey, two men President Trump appears to despise. Prior to Mr. Patel’s arrival, the FBI seemed more focused on policy and intelligence, often competing with the CIA, than on domestic crime and immigration, both priorities of the Trump administration.
The announcement was in keeping with Mr. Patel’s earlier vision of shutting down the FBI headquarters, which FBI agents have occupied since 1974, and transforming it into a “museum of the deep state.” However, since being confirmed as the FBI’s ninth director in February, Mr. Patel has been largely mum on his plans for the Hoover Building.
“We want the American men and women to know, if you’re going to come work at the premier law enforcement agency in the world, we’re going to give you a building that’s commensurate with that, and that’s not this place,” Mr. Patel told Ms. Bartioromo.
One former agent was skeptical about Mr. Patel’s plans, which would require a herculean effort to execute, given the building’s proximity to the Department of Justice and D.C.’s “Hall of Power.”
“Shutting down FBIHQ will have its challenges. I believe there is too much infrastructure and personnel to warrant spreading them out,” the retired FBI agent, Richard Stout, director of the group Reform the Bureau, told the Sun.
This announcement was the latest in a series of new changes Mr. Patel is bringing to the bureau, including placing more agents to work full-time on immigration enforcement. Yesterday, Mr. Patel shuttered a public corruption squad that worked with Special Prosecutor Jack Smith in his investigations into President Trump. Agents from that squad, “CR-15,” will be reassigned to different units.
