The Patriot Post® · Diversity, Equity, and the FBI's New HQ
Where will the new FBI headquarters finally be built? Thanks to government inefficiency, that question has been debated for upwards of a decade. But what if no one likes the answer?
The location for the FBI’s new billion-dollar headquarters building was thought to be Springfield, Virginia, but the General Services Administration unexpectedly announced that Greenbelt, Maryland, would be the site instead.
The decision raised the ire of lawmakers on both sides of the political aisle, joining the likes of Virginia’s two Democrat senators, Mark Warner and Tim Kaine, with the state’s Republican governor, Glenn Youngkin, as well as several Democrat and Republican representatives, who issued the following joint statement:
We are deeply disturbed to learn that a political appointee at the General Services Administration overruled the unanimous recommendation of a three-person panel comprised of career experts from the GSA and the Federal Bureau of Investigation concluding that Springfield, Virginia is the site best suited for the new FBI headquarters. We have repeatedly condemned political interference in the independent, agency-run site selection process for a new FBI headquarters. Any fair weighing of the criteria points to a selection of Virginia. It is clear that this process has been irrevocably undermined and tainted, and this decision must now be reversed.
Of course, wherever the building ultimately ends up, it will be a boon for the local economy. Hence the political interest.
But it’s not just Virginia politicians who are objecting. FBI leadership has also voiced opposition to the decision, although Director Christopher Wray says his concern is not over the location per se but the process by which the decision was made — a process Wray believes was based on one person’s favoritism.
That person is former GSA Commissioner Nina Albert, an urban planner who before her stint at the GSA was vice president of the Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority. And it just so happens that the Greenbelt location chosen by Albert is owned by the WMATA. Wray considers it a conflict of interest.
Meanwhile, Albert has left the GSA, having been appointed by the Biden administration as Acting Deputy Mayor for Planning and Economic Development.
For what it’s worth, the GSA has gone to bat for Albert’s decision, saying that Greenbelt was considered the best available fit. Yet this appears to contradict an earlier assessment of the location by the FBI, which noted in part that there were “major, fixed infrastructure costs associated with building a facility on any of these three sites, and Landover and Greenbelt had land acquisition costs because they were not government-owned.”
A government watchdog has launched an investigation, but it sure seems like the Biden administration is engaged in cronyism. Beyond that, Joe Biden’s directive that all executive agencies seek to implement so-called diversity, equity, and inclusion policies may also have played a role in favoring and empowering Albert.
Color us shocked.