FBI Shutting Down DC HQ, Relocating 1,500 Agents

FBI Director Kash Patel said in an interview published Friday that the bureau will leave the J. Edgar Hoover Building in Washington and send 1,500 agents into the field.

Patel confirmed the plans in an interview set to air on Fox News’s Sunday Morning Futures this weekend. He said he will give each state a “plus-up” as the FBI disperses agents away from Washington.

“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,” Patel said. “So we’re taking 1,500 of those folks and moving them out. Every state’s getting a plus-up.”

Patel also said the FBI will leave the J. Edgar Hoover Building, calling it “unsafe for our workforce.”

“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,” Patel said.

Patel said moving agents out of Washington and the J. Edgar Hoover Building is part of his push to return the FBI to its core mission of fighting crime.

“I think when we do things like that, we inspire folks in America to become intel analysts and agents and say, ‘We want to work at the FBI because we want to fight violent crime and we want to be sent out into the country to do it,'” Patel said, adding that the agents will go into the field in the next “three, six, nine months.”

Patel discussed ditching the J. Edgar Hoover Building and making it into a museum of the “deep state” in comments made prior to the 2024 election.

He walked back those comments during his confirmation hearing, but he now appears to be making good on the pledge to leave the FBI building in downtown Washington.

The FBI had selected Greenbelt, Maryland, to house its new headquarters in a plan unveiled in 2023 under the Biden administration.

President Donald Trump said in March that he is planning to stop the FBI’s move to Greenbelt and instead propose building a new facility in Washington.