Three years after President Trump canceled a decade-long plan to build an FBI headquarters in the Washington suburbs, the bureau’s effort at securing a new home remains mired in uncertainty, with no active plan or funding source and thousands of agents still working at the crumbling and poorly secured J. Edgar Hoover Building in downtown Washington.
But there is ample financial support and a clear plan for another FBI headquarters project, one in Huntsville, Ala., that will welcome 1,500 of the bureau’s headquarters staff from the Washington region next year and probably thousands more in coming years.
The principal architect of the flow of FBI staff to Alabama’s Redstone Arsenal complex is Sen. Richard C. Shelby (R-Ala.), the powerful chairman of the Senate Appropriations Committee who has shepherded the project through approvals and secured $1.1 billion in funding for it over the past four years. Continue reading.