Virginia Delegation Members Request Investigation of Site Selection Process for New FBI HQ

Letter

Dear Acting Inspector General Erickson,

We write to request an immediate investigation into the serious concerns raised by the
Director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) Christopher Wray, regarding the site
selection process for a new FBI headquarters.1 There is overwhelming evidence suggesting that
the General Services Administration (GSA) administered a site selection process fouled by
political considerations and alleged impropriety -- one that was repeatedly curated to arrive at a
predetermined outcome.

Throughout the site selection deliberations, GSA suppressed, dismissed, and overrode the
judgement and recommendations of career officials from GSA and the FBI. This has led the
Director of the FBI to take the extraordinary step of calling into question the "fairness and
transparency in the process and GSA's failure to adhere to its own site selection plan." 2

In July 2023, the agency executed a series of changes to significantly alter longestablished site selection criteria and scoring rules. The changes made to the criteria were almost
exclusively responsive to perceived concerns and direct requests from representatives of the
Greenbelt site, meant to tilt the selection process in favor of Greenbelt. GSA made these changes
over the objections of the FBI, which wrote to GSA in a June 26, 2023 memo that the original
scoring criteria "best balanced the many wide-ranging elements considered for optimal site
selection."3

That same month, the agency finalized a plan to unilaterally remove a career official from
the position of Site Selection Authority, the person tasked with confirming the recommendation
of the site selection panel and certifying a final site selection. 4 The agency, instead, installed a
political appointee as the Site Selection Authority. Director Wray, once again, raised serious
objections to the change. Additionally, the FBI identified potential conflicts of interest that the
appointee had related to the Greenbelt site, and raised concerns about potential impartiality.
These concerns were never fully addressed by GSA.

1 GSA's Office of Inspector General has previously reviewed earlier stages of this site selection process -- "Review of GSA's Revised Plan for the Federal Bureau of Investigation Headquarters Consolidation Project," dated August 27, 2018.
2 Wray, Christopher A. (November 9, 2023) Message from the Director to all FBI Employees on GSA Site Selection Announcement.
3 Memorandum (September 22, 2023). From Brian C. Turner, Associate Deputy Director, Federal Bureau of Investigation. Re: FBI New Suburban Headquarters Site Selection Concerns.
4 Id.

In August 2023, the site selection panel, comprised of two career GSA officials and one
career FBI official, reached a unanimous decision to select Springfield, Virginia as the home for
the new FBI headquarters. The new Site Selection Authority unilaterally overturned the decision
of the panel, including by making changes to the scoring -- contrary to GSA's own site selection
plan -- which benefited consideration of the Greenbelt site, and hurt the Springfield site.
According to the FBI, "the justification offered for those changes have been both varied and
insufficient."5

In summary, GSA changed the original site selection criteria -- which had been developed
by GSA experts, in accordance with the agency's own best practices for site selection -- in a way
that favored the Greenbelt site, and did so over the objections of the FBI Director. Then GSA
changed the person tasked with confirming the final site selection from a career official to a
political appointee. As identified by the FBI, there existed a potential conflict of interest with
that political appointee, tied to the Greenbelt site. The political appointee then overturned the
decision of a panel of career officials who unanimously selected Springfield, in part by changing
how certain criteria were calculated and how certain factors were considered, contrary to what
had been previously outlined to the public and to Congress by GSA. Almost immediately after
directing the final site selection to Greenbelt, the political appointee promptly left the federal
government, implicating Congress's ability to engage with this individual in an oversight
capacity. In defending the indefensible, GSA has decided to proceed with the selection of
Greenbelt over the objections of its client agency, the FBI.

These facts, when taken together, paint an ugly picture of a fatally flawed procurement
that demands further investigation. We request that your office initiate an immediate
investigation into the site selection process for the FBI headquarters.

Sincerely,

Source