FBI will permanently close the Hoover Building in Washington, Kash Patel says

The FBI’s J. Edgar Hoover Building in Washington will permanently shut down and the agency will move to different headquarters, according to FBI Director Kash Patel.

The switch to the Ronald Reagan Building and International Trade Center would put the bureau in a building currently occupied by the Environmental Protection Agency, the Department of Commerce and other federal and private offices. It was the longtime base of the U.S. Agency for International Development until President Donald Trump’s administration gutted that entity weeks into his second term.

“After more than 20 years of failed attempts, we finalized a plan to permanently close the FBI’s Hoover headquarters and move the workforce into a safe, modern facility,” Patel said Friday in a statement on X.

The Hoover Building, named for the agency’s first and longest-serving director, has served as FBI headquarters since the 1970s. Discussions about the bureau’s move have been underway for years; the brutalist building’s concrete structure is disintegrating and its infrastructure in disrepair. The U.S. Government Accountability Office said in a 2011 report that the Hoover Building does not adequately “support the FBI’s long-term security, space, and building condition requirements.”

The Biden administration approved new headquarters for the FBI in Maryland in 2023, but Patel reversed course over the summer and said the bureau will remain in Washington instead, moving to the nearby Ronald Reagan building. Both structures are a few blocks from the White House.

It’s unclear when the move will happen and when the Hoover Building will officially shut down.

“When we arrived, taxpayers were about to be on the hook for nearly $5 billion for a new headquarters that wouldn’t open until 2035. We scrapped that plan,” Patel said in his social post, referencing the abandoned move to Maryland. “Instead, we selected the already-existing Reagan Building, saving billions and allowing the transition to begin immediately with required safety and infrastructure upgrades already underway.”

Maryland lawmakers have argued that the Reagan Building is neither secure nor modern enough for the bureau. Construction on it began in 1990 and it opened in 1998.

In November, Maryland officials sued the Trump administration for blocking construction of new FBI headquarters, accusing the federal government of illegally tossing out years of congressional planning.

“The problem with the current FBI building is that it’s too old, too small, and too exposed,” Maryland Gov. Wes Moore said at the time. “So what does the President do? He moves the FBI to another building that is too old, too small, and too exposed.”