As part of President Donald Trump‘s plan to move federal agencies out of the Washington, D.C. area, FBI leaders are pushing to move the FBI National Academy from headquarters at Quantico, Virginia to Huntsville, Alabama.
Moving the Academy, a 10-week training facility for 250 domestic and international law enforcement officers, has been proposed by FBI Deputy Director Dan Bongino, The Washington Post reported Wednesday. The training program for new bureau hires and other parts of the Academy such as the laboratory division, would remain at Quantico, sources told The Post.
The proposal plan remains preliminary but aligns with Trump’s April deadline for agencies to create plans to move their headquarters away from Washington D.C., and be in separate areas of the country “where the people are.”
The move could be unjustifiably costly, some personnel have expressed, especially to move to Alabama’s most populous city. The FBI has operated a U.S. Army base near downtown Huntsville, Redstone Arsenal, for decades but upgrades to the facility would be necessary to add hundreds of staff and agents from Quantico.
“If you look at FBI field offices, for example, you’ll see many that are not located in downtown areas given the highly specialized nature of these facilities and their security requirements,” former Public Buildings Service Commissioner during the Obama Administration Norman Dong told Federal News Network in April.
FBI offices are far outside of central cities such as Atlanta and Sacramento, according to Dong. The FBI Academy is in Quantico, a town in Prince William County, Virginia and approximately 35 miles from D.C. An FBI spokesperson said options for relocation are under evaluation to discover if any would save the bureau money and serve as a sufficient facility for training.
After making bureau leadership changes, including nominating Kash Patel to serve as FBI director, Trump picked Bongino, a former Secret Service agent and right-wing podcaster, as deputy director. Patel said approximately 1,000 staff and agents would be moved from the D.C. office and 500 to the Huntsville facility so the FBI would be more present in other cities.
Thanks to the COVID-19 pandemic, Trump was unable to move federal building and agencies from D.C. during his first term as president. He did, however, move the Bureau of Land Management’s headquarters from D.C. to Grand Junction, Colorado in 2019 and placed it closer to the land the agency manages. A Biden Administration review later revealed that more than 80 percent of the agency’s employees left because of the move and the headquarters returned to D.C.
U.S. Sens. Mark R. Warner and Tim Kaine and U.S. Rep. Eugene Vindman, all of Virginia, slammed Bongino’s proposal yesterday.
“As Vice Chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, I expect Congress to be deeply skeptical of any plan to uproot the FBI’s National Academy from its longtime home at Quantico and relocate it to Huntsville. This move raises serious questions, starting with why such a relocation is even necessary, and at what cost? Quantico is co-located with other critical FBI and national security assets and before we spend taxpayer dollars on a disruptive and potentially unnecessary move, the Bureau owes Congress and the American people a clear justification for this plan,” Warner said.
According to Kaine, a move to Huntsville makes no sense and is inefficient for taxpayer dollars.
“This is part of a larger effort by the Administration to dramatically politicize, reduce and relocate the federal workforce. If Director Patel and Deputy Director Bongino want to move the FBI Academy, then they will have to explain to Congress and the American public why this is needed and how much it will cost,” Kaine said.
Vindman represents Virginia’s 7th District, which is home to Quantico‘s state-of-the-art facility. He said the locations “remains the best place for local and state law enforcement to learn from our incredible agents at the FBI. As a former prosecutor, I know that the most efficient and impactful way for law enforcement to continue keeping our communities safe is to train at the world class facilities that have already been built by taxpayers at Quantico. This move raises serious questions and Congress needs answers.”
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Rebecca Barnabi
