Wray Urges Federal Government to Reconsider FBI HQ Site Decision

FBI Director Christopher Wray last month called on the General Services Administration to scrap plans to relocate the agency’s headquarters to a Maryland suburb and out of downtown Washington, D.C., calling the site selection flawed.

In an Oct. 12 letter obtained by The Washington Post, Wray told Robert Carnahan, the GSA’s top official that the process for selecting a location for the new headquarters should be restarted and that a former GSA official who had been in charge of the process before leaving last month had ignored the recommendations of a panel enacted to choose the location.

Officials announced Wednesday that they have chosen a 61-acre site next to the Greenbelt Metro Station in Prince George’s County, Maryland, as the new headquarters. The Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority, also known as Metro, owns the land.

The selection project has been going on for years while pitting Maryland and Virginia officials against each other to vie for the federal complex which is expected to bring in billions of dollars in taxpayer revenues.

In his October letter, Wray noted that the GSA official had been a former employee of Metro, the owner of the Greenbelt site, and “was later granted overarching power to select the site without adhering to the recommendation of the unanimous panel and with limitless ability to decide when outside information should and should not be considered in making the site selection decision.”

Wray said the FBI “cannot accept a site selection decision with these unresolved issues” and asked that the GSA appoint a new official to “re-run” the selection process.

He didn’t question the official’s “integrity” but said the decision should not come from an official with “previous, direct affiliation with one of the parties of this procurement.”

Wray spoke with senior FBI leaders Thursday morning and sent an email to the workforce to inform them that the panel working on the decision had unanimously chosen a site in Springfield, Va., but their choice was overruled by an official with the GSA.

“Unfortunately, we have concerns about fairness and transparency in the process and GSA’s failure to adhere to its own site selection plan,” Wray said in the email. “Despite our engagement with GSA over the last two months on these issues, our concerns about the process remain unresolved.”

He also stressed that his concerns aren’t with the decision, but with the process, and told the workforce that “for our part, we will continue to be clear about our process concerns, even as we work with GSA toward the design and construction of a facility.”

Wray further said the FBI hopes to secure funding for office space in Washington, D.C., which would house up to 1,000, but it is not clear if the building will be at the FBI’s current location on Pennsylvania Avenue.

Greenbelt was picked as the new site over the Springfield location and a third location in Landover, Maryland, which is also in Prince George’s County.