Staff Reports
FBI Director nominee Kash Patel recently sent shockwaves through the comfortable halls of the Washington establishment during his Senate Judiciary Committee hearing. Patel had the audacity to suggest that the FBI’s Washington headquarters might be better suited as a museum, which, according to him, would reflect the outdated ways of the agency. The real point he was trying to make, however, was that the FBI’s massive workforce, which consists of about 38,000 employees, should be more dispersed across the country instead of being packed into a single building in D.C.
Patel highlighted that around 7,500 agents are cramped inside the Hoover Building, and even when extending the boundaries to include the wider national capital area, that number barely climbs to 11,000. For the conservative populace, these figures are alarming. Why are a third of FBI agents stationed in D.C. when they could be out in the real America, solving crimes and serving the very citizens who fund their operation? It seems that the only thing the D.C. crowd is good at is creating bureaucratic red tape.
When faced with questions from Senator Christopher Coons of Delaware, Patel stood his ground. He argued that the true mission of the FBI should be to assist local sheriff departments and to make a difference where it counts. He illustrated that while having agents in the D.C. area can prevent crimes like rape, it pales in comparison to the potential impact of having them deployed in local communities to stop such serious offenses as homicide. This is a message that seems to resonate well outside the Beltway but raises eyebrows inside it.
FBI Director nominee Kash Patel told the Senate Judiciary Committee Thursday that his comment about turning the FBI's Washington headquarters into a museum was meant to convey his belief that more employees should be deployed across the U.S. https://t.co/6ttIqYqSzh
— The Washington Times (@WashTimes) January 30, 2025
The Senator tried to counter Patel’s remarks by suggesting that his initial statement about turning the headquarters into a museum was questionable. Coons would have preferred if Patel had simply defended the FBI’s existence in D.C. with no mention of breaking the mold. Yet, the reality is that many Americans are fed up with seeing their tax dollars fund an agency that is more concerned with babysitting politicians than protecting citizens.
In a time when public trust in government agencies is at an all-time low, the idea of diversifying where FBI agents are stationed seems sensible, even critical. While the Washington elite may tremble at the thought of agents in the “heartland,” average Americans probably wouldn’t mind a little less oversight from the people more interested in making headlines than protecting the public.
