FBI Director Kash Patel announced Friday that the bureau is leaving its longtime headquarters in the J. Edgar Hoover Building and would transfer 1,500 employees to locations around the country.
“This FBI is leaving the Hoover building because this building is unsafe for our workforce,” Patel told Fox Business anchor Maria Bartiromo in an interview.
“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 did not specify what safety hazards are posed by the massive brutalist structure on Pennsylvania Avenue between the White House and Congress, or share a timeframe for the move or the bureau’s new headquarters location.
“Look, the FBI is 38,000 when we are fully manned, which we are not. In the national capital region in the 50-mile radius around Washington, DC, 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 are taking 1,500 of those folks and moving them out. Every state is getting a plus-up. And 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.”
He added: “in the next 3, 6, 9 months we’re going to be doing that hard.”
