FBI headquarters selection process was ‘tainted by scandal,’ Congress says

EXCLUSIVE — House lawmakers criticized the agency responsible for selecting the FBI’s multibillion-dollar headquarters site on Wednesday, unveiling findings from their monthslong investigation into the matter and threatening to withhold funding unless corrective action was taken.

The House Judiciary and Oversight committees released a report on the General Services Administration’s process of choosing Greenbelt, Maryland, as the site of the next FBI headquarters. After reviewing thousands of pages of documents and interviewing two key figures involved in choosing Greenbelt, the committees determined that the selection process was “tainted by scandal.”

They highlighted their concerns with Nina Albert, who worked as a top Biden-appointed official in the GSA.

Albert, the committees found, had outsize influence in the selection process, a tense decadelong endeavor that ramped up in 2022, when Congress tasked the GSA with choosing Greenbelt or Landover, Maryland, or Springfield, Virginia, to build the headquarters.

A three-person panel, consisting of two career GSA officials and an FBI employee named Shannon Parry, unanimously chose Springfield in July 2023, but the committees found that Albert overruled the panel months later and chose Greenbelt, a suburb less than an hour from Washington, D.C.

When the GSA announced its choice of Greenbelt in November 2023, FBI Director Christopher Wray vocalized worries he had with the decision, saying without naming her that Albert had a “potential conflict of interest” and that the process lacked transparency.

Wray made clear his concern was with Albert’s affiliation with the Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority. Albert served as a vice president at WMATA before joining the GSA in July 2021, and WMATA and the state of Maryland own the land chosen for the FBI’s new campus.

The FBI has long sought a new headquarters, saying the J. Edgar Hoover Building, an aging low-rise in downtown Washington that has been the FBI’s home since the 1970s, was deteriorating and no longer suitable.

As part of their investigation, the committees spoke with Parry, who revealed, according to a transcript of her closed-door interview, that Albert held a “back-check meeting” after the panel unanimously chose Springfield and that during that meeting, Albert conveyed that she favored Greenbelt, in part because of the “socioeconomic impact” it would have on the area. Parry said the meeting was unplanned and occurred at the request of GSA, and that panel members reiterated their support for choosing Springfield.

But during the meeting, “the comments [from Albert] were that it was very clear that the Greenbelt location … would have a greater socioeconomic impact than the Springfield location,” Parry told lawmakers.

Albert, in her own closed-door interview with lawmakers, disputed the term “back-check” and said the meeting was merely to “see if there was any more discussion merited.”

While the site selection process granted Albert the final say in the headquarters location, the committees said her actions signaled that she lacked impartiality.

“The revelation of this ‘back-check’ meeting is concerning because it underscores the issues that Albert had with the panel’s consensus decision,” the committees wrote. “This unusual and unscheduled meeting was the first sign of Albert’s reluctance towards the panel’s consensus recommendation of Springfield, and her favorability instead toward the Greenbelt site.”

When asked about the FBI’s concerns with the selection process, Albert said she was unfazed by the bureau and that she stood by her decision.

“I mean, I don’t have a reaction, candidly,” she told the lawmakers. “I know what my approach to reviewing the criteria was. I believe that I was fair in my application, and I tried to be as incredibly transparent as possible. I spent a lot of time writing the site selection decision so that Mr. Wray, others in the FBI, the American public could understand how I arrived there. And I stand by my decision.”

Several Virginia lawmakers from both sides of the political aisle called for an investigation into the selection process last year upon learning from Wray of the controversy behind it. The GSA inspector general responded by opening an inquiry into it.

The status of the inquiry is unclear, and the GSA inspector general did not respond to a request for comment.

The Transportation, Judiciary, and Oversight committees also wrote in a letter on Wednesday to Robin Carnahan, who heads the GSA, that because of their “unresolved concerns,” they would not approve the GSA’s current funding proposal for the $4.5 billion complex.

In addition to threatening to deny future funding, the committees’ report included the recommendation that Congress rescind $200 million that it had already authorized for the GSA to use toward the headquarters. They also reiterated their call for the FBI to consider relocating out of the Washington area entirely to its sprawling and newly upgraded facility in Alabama.

“The saga of the need for a new FBI headquarters and the politicized process of selecting a new location have dragged on for over a decade. The site-selection process was flawed from start to finish,” the committees said, adding that “much more may be needed to rectify this GSA site-selection processes in the future.”