The FBI told managers that 1,500 personnel will be transferred from the headquarters near Washington headquarters to offices around the country, including around a third being placed in an Alabama office, multiple outlets reported on Friday.
Around 1,000 staff and agents would be dispatched into offices nationwide, including another 500 that will be placed in the agency’s Huntsville, Ala., campus. The change was relayed to workers at a Friday meeting.
The development was signaled by the agency’s new director Kash Patel, who was confirmed Thursday with a 51-49 vote and sworn in on Friday.
“This will include streamlining our operations at headquarters while bolstering the presence of field agents across the nation,” Patel said Friday morning to all FBI employees, The Washington Post reported, citing a source familiar with the message.
When asked for comment, the FBI did not confirm or deny the proposed relocations.
“Director Patel has made clear his promise to the American public that FBI agents will be in communities focused on combatting violent crime,” an FBI spokesperson said in an emailed statement to The Hill. “He has directed FBI leadership to implement a plan to put this promise into action.”
Patel, a former House aide who later served in various national security posts during President Trump’s first White House term, said in August last year that he would shut down the FBI headquarters building in Washington and “open it up the next day as the Museum of the Deep State.”
He also said during his appearance on “Stinchfield Tonight” that he would “send those 7,000 agents in the headquarters building down range to chase down rapists, to chase down murderers, to chase down drug traffickers and let the cops be cops on the streets across America. You keep a small contingent in Washington, DC. That’s step one.”
During the first month of Trump’s second term, at least 75 career FBI officials and Department of Justice lawyers have either been fired, resigned or stripped of their positions, Reuters noted on Friday.
“I promise you the following: there will be accountability within the FBI and outside of the FBI, and we will do it through rigorous constitutional oversight starting this weekend,” Patel said Friday.
