FBI moves headquarters to Maryland
The Biden administration has selected a vacant lot in Greenbelt, Maryland, for the new headquarters of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, despite ongoing concerns from some senior agency officials, four people familiar with the situation said late Wednesday.
The plan, expected to be made public Thursday, could still face internal hurdles and zoning or financing issues, but if it goes ahead it would put an end to one of the most contentious bureaucratic decisions of the past decade .
Under the proposal, the sprawling campus will be located near the Greenbelt Metro Station as part of a larger multi-use development. It would replace the crumbling J. Edgar Hoover Building in downtown Washington, which is encased in mesh to protect passersby from falling concrete.
The agency will maintain a smaller office in downtown Washington, a senior law enforcement official said. Congress would ultimately have to fund a new campus, and lawmakers in Virginia and Maryland have fought for years over where the FBI headquarters should be located.
The decision by the General Services Administration, which oversees the management and development of federal properties, was previously reported by The Washington Post.
FBI officials have privately expressed concerns about the site’s development process — but not about its location outside Washington, according to an official with knowledge of the situation who requested anonymity to discuss internal deliberations. The official did not specify the nature of these concerns.
Leaders in Prince George’s County, one of the nation’s largest black-majority suburbs, have long labeled the site a vital economic project. The area offers plenty of room for expansion and access to public transportation and major highways, they say, indicating a highly educated workforce and a greater variety of merchants in the area than the somewhat isolated Hoover Building.
But a senior official briefed on the process said the choice of Greenbelt was based on several factors, including the availability of the land and the “racial equity” of building in Prince George’s County.
In 2018, President Donald J. Trump scrapped longstanding plans to select a location in Virginia or Maryland, dating back to the Obama administration. At the time, Mr. Trump’s advisers cited a lack of available congressional funding needed to pay for the $3 billion in construction costs in the suburbs, and the inconvenience of moving about 10,000 workers out of town.
Instead, the Trump administration proposed rebuilding the headquarters at the existing site and permanently relocating more than 2,000 FBI employees to Alabama, West Virginia and other states.
Lawmakers in Maryland and Virginia reversed that reversal after he left office, inserting language into a federal funding bill that revived the plan to move the agency to the suburbs.
Trump’s unusual interest in the building (a favorite topic of Oval Office discussion early in his administration) and its proximity to his now-defunct hotel across the street from the Hoover Building raised eyebrows among some Democrats . They claimed he wanted to prevent the Hoover site from being redeveloped into a competing project, perhaps another luxury hotel.
After a five-year investigation, the Justice Department’s inspector general determined that the decision was most likely driven by financial and logistical issues, and not by Mr. Trump’s attempt to personally intervene to protect his downtown properties. Protect Washington from a potential rival.
Several FBI witnesses, including the agency’s director, Christopher A. Wray, told the inspector general that they had been given the authority to determine the location of the new headquarters.
They chose to rebuild at the existing location because it would allow them to concentrate their workforce in a central location next to the Justice Department and because it would cost less, officials said.