Federal government cancels new FBI headquarters

WASHINGTON — The federal government is canceling the search for a new FBI headquarters, according to officials familiar with the decision, putting a more than decade-long effort by the bureau to move out of the crumbling J. Edgar Hoover Building back at square one.

The decision follows years of failed attempts by federal officials to persuade Congress to fully back a plan for a campus in the Washington suburbs paid for by trading away the Hoover Building to a real estate developer and putting up nearly $2 billion in taxpayer funds to cover the remaining cost.

Officials from the General Services Administration, which manages federal real estate, said they plan to announce the cancellation in a phone call with bidders and in meetings on Capitol Hill on Tuesday morning.

They spoke on the condition of anonymity.

For years, FBI officials have raised alarms that the decrepit conditions at Hoover constitute serious security concerns.

Both agencies are operating under transitional leadership, as President Donald Trump’s appointee to the FBI, Christopher Wray, has not yet been confirmed, and Trump has not appointed a permanent GSA administrator.

GSA’s unconventional strategy of trying to offset the development cost by trading the Hoover Building downtown to the winning bidder was aimed at saving the government money but became a laborious and expensive complication.

As the search dragged on, both the federal government and developers bidding on the project began to bear inordinate costs.

Real estate companies pursuing the deal spent years and millions of dollars attempting to make their case for the project.

The GSA, meanwhile, is housing many of the bureau’s 9,500 headquarters employees using expensive short-term leases at about a dozen locations throughout the Washington region because the staff long ago outgrew the Hoover Building.

It is possible that the FBI could utilize some of the already appropriated money toward another headquarters plan. Acting GSA Administrator Timothy Horne is scheduled to testify before a House subcommittee Wednesday at a hearing about “Maximizing Taxpayer Returns and Reducing Waste in Real Estate.”

In the meantime, the FBI headquarters is crumbling. On a tour of the building in 2015, bureau officials pointed to cracked concrete and makeshift work stations.

The officials said the structure is so inefficient that it has begun to hinder the agency’s modern mission, one increasingly focused on combating international terrorist threats and cybercrime.

They are also increasingly concerned that the Hoover Building could be susceptible to attacks.