National security should determine where to put the new FBI headquarters

In the next few months, the General Services Administration (GSA) will decide where to house the new FBI headquarters. While there are clear social, economic and political benefits to be gained from each site under consideration, from a national security perspective, the Springfield, Va., location is unquestionably the best.

To be sure, I’m not a disinterested observer. I’ve lived in Virginia for many years, worked for a Virginia member of Congress, and today run a national security-focused academic center at the Commonwealth’s most diverse public university. But the fact is, if the FBI is to leave downtown Washington, a critical, if not dispositive, factor must be the FBI’s growing cyber, intelligence  and national security missions.

The political and bureaucratic journey to a new headquarters has been a long one, dating back to 2005, with many twists and turns along the way. But the real journey that ought to guide the GSA’s decision on where to put the headquarters is not a political or bureaucratic one. It is the journey that the FBI has been on in the five decades since it moved into its D.C. digs — and in particular, the massive shift the FBI has made in the past two or so decades, since the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. 

The FBI is fundamentally different today than it was in 1974, when the J. Edgar Hoover building was first occupied. As the Government Accountability Office (GAO) noted in 2011, back then the FBI “was primarily a law enforcement organization [and] [s]ince then, its mission has grown in response to evolving threats and now includes counterterrorism, counterintelligence, weapons of mass destruction deterrence  and cyber security.”  That shift, from being a law enforcement-focused agency with some national security responsibilities, to being cyber, intelligence and national security-focused, with a core law enforcement mission as well, is the key element that ought to drive the GSA’s decision. 

When viewed from this angle, it is hard to justify any site other than the Virginia location. After all, of the three sites under consideration, only the Commonwealth site would give the FBI direct access to the majority of the nation’s intelligence workforce and cybersecurity graduates, not to mention the massive talent pipeline located in the headquarters of agencies such as the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI), the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), the National Reconnaissance Office (NRO), the National Geospatial Intelligence Agency (NGA), the Cyber and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA), and the National Counterterrorism Center (NCTC), as well as the Department of Defense (DOD), just to name a few. 

The Springfield facility also would be perfectly positioned to draw graduates from Virginia’s top-notch public universities, including George Mason University, Virginia Tech, the University of Virginia, William & Mary, and James Madison University. Indeed, some of these institutions, such as Mason’s Scalia Law School, have created programs that are ideal for aspiring FBI employees and those already at headquarters who are looking to move up in their jobs. For example, our Cyber, Intelligence and National Security LL.M. degree — the first of its kind in the nation — is designed to provide a tailored curriculum specifically for lawyers looking to specialize in these new and rapidly evolving areas of the law.

Indeed, it is this very factor — proximity and access to what matters for national security, whether that is talent, educational opportunities, or co-location with other key agencies — that enables the Virginia site to meet and exceed all of the selection criteria set by GSA. Locating the headquarters in Springfield also would bring the facility closer than others — by a lot — to critical FBI assets and personnel, including the FBI National Academy, the FBI Laboratory at Quantico, and the new FBI Central Records Complex in Winchester, Va. 

It’s worth noting that the FBI’s shift to an agency focused on the full range of intelligence, national security and law enforcement missions is likely to become even more pronounced in the coming years. This is because our nation is experiencing a massive increase in new and novel threats from abroad, whether in the form of cyber attacks, covert disinformation, growing counterintelligence efforts, or active measures being undertaken inside the United States from increasingly aggressive nation-state adversaries such as China, Russia, Iran and North Korea, along with the continuing threat of terrorist attack inside the United States from al Qaeda and ISIS. 

Given all this, there can be little question that the right approach for the GSA, in deciding where to put the FBI headquarters, is to eschew questions of politics and to focus instead on what matters: our national security.

Jamil N. Jaffer (@jamil_n_jaffer) is the founder and executive director of the National Security Institute at George Mason University’s Antonin Scalia Law School. He served as counsel to the assistant attorney general for national security at the Department of Justice, as an associate counsel to President George W. Bush in the White House, and as senior counsel to the House Intelligence Committee.