Warner condemns FBI HQ site selection as ‘corrupt’

U.S. Sen. Mark Warner said Nov. 9 that the General Services Administration’s selection of Greenbelt, Maryland, instead of Fairfax County for the new FBI headquarters was a “corrupt” process, and that he expected better from the Biden administration.

Warner’s comments followed an email that day from FBI Director Christopher Wray to the agency’s entire workforce, saying that a former political appointee to the GSA overrode a three-person panel’s unanimous recommendation to build the FBI’s new headquarters in Springfield.

In a bipartisan statement, Warner, U.S. Sen. Tim Kaine, Gov. Glenn Youngkin and almost all of Virginia’s congressional delegation called for a reversal of the decision, condemning “political interference” in the site selection.

The location for the new headquarters, replacing the FBI’s aging J. Edgar Hoover Building in Washington, D.C., has long been under discussion, with Virginia and Maryland officials competing for the new office, which is expected to bring in 750 to 1,000 jobs and an economic boost.

In a two-part site selection process, two career GSA officials and a longtime FBI official evaluated two locations in Prince George’s County, Maryland, and a location in Springfield, and the panelists unanimously recommended 58 acres in Springfield already owned by the GSA. However, during the second phase of site selection, a senior GSA executive appointed by the White House recommended the Maryland site.

Wray wrote in his email that upon reading a draft of that GSA executive’s report, FBI officials “expressed concern that elements of the site selection plan were not followed. In particular, the FBI observed that, at times, outside information was inserted into the process in a manner which appeared to disproportionately favor Greenbelt.”

FBI officials “raised a serious concern about the appearance of a lack of impartiality by the GSA senior executive,” Wray wrote. Without naming the executive, he noted that the person had worked for Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority, which owns the Greenbelt property.

Nina M. Albert, WMATA’s former top real estate official, was named commissioner of GSA’s Public Buildings Service in 2021. However, Albert left the GSA in October and is now Washington, D.C.’s deputy mayor of planning and economic development. Albert’s representative did not return messages seeking comment.

Warner said he and other officials will call on the Biden administration for a general inspector review. “This whole process needs to be thrown out and restarted.”

A longer version of this story ran online on Nov. 9.