This story is of interest for symbolic reasons more than practical ones, although the practicalities certainly deserve attention.
According to the FBI (and the GSA), the Bureau’s headquarters building on Pennsylvania Avenue, midway between the Capitol and the White House, is worn out and falling apart. It cannot be upgraded to fulfill the FBI’s current organizational, data processing and records storage functions, nor can it be made adequately secure against lethal assault or catastrophe.
In consequence, the Biden administration is moving forward with plans, initiated in 2013, to construct a new headquarters facility that will consolidate FBI leased floor space from across the District into one location.
The FBI’s current headquarters, the J.Edgar Hoover Building, took nearly 15 years to design and build. Construction was completed in 1975. Its amenities include:
- An amphitheater
- A 162-seat auditorium
- An automobile repair shop
- A two-story basketball court
- An eighth-floor cafeteria, with access to a roof garden
- Classrooms
- Cryptographic vault
- Developing laboratories for both still photography and motion pictures
- Exercise rooms
- A film library
- A firing range
- 80,000 square feet (7,400 m2) of laboratory space
- A medical clinic
- Morgue
- A printing plant
- A test pattern and ballistics range
- A 700-seat theater
I don’t doubt that the FBI needs a new headquarters after 48 years in the same old digs. Nor do I begrudge the Bureau its upgrade as a matter of principle, assuming we actually need a domestic intelligence agency with the FBI’s capabilities.
Still, symbolically, at least, I can’t help noticing that the U.S. is becoming as Soviet as the Soviets were.
Tidewater News and Opinion Forum 
“U.S. is becoming as Soviet as the Soviets were.”
Quite a stretch there!
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We are grateful to be informed of your incredulity.
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You are welcome.
At its height during the good old days of the USSR, the KGB had 480,000 people. The FBI has 35,000 employees. The FBI is contained and controlled under the rule of law. The KGB operated without such restraints and protections.
So, yes, I find your statement that “the U.S. is becoming as Soviet as the Soviets were” to be – trying to keep it polite here – quite a stretch.
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RE: “The FBI is contained and controlled under the rule of law.”
I’d say that’s debatable, in light of various recent history. In any case, the FBI’s upgrade to a new, massive headquarters surely indicates Federal priorities. Apparently, spying on Americans is a significant priority for the administration.
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“Apparently, spying on Americans is a significant priority for the administration.”
So, enforcing the law and protecting the country from terrorism has morphed into “spying on Americans” in your MAGA-Republican circles? Could that be because you have become the party of domestic terrorists with heroes such as Kyle Rittenhouse, Stewart Rhodes, and Ashli Babbitt? Just asking.
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RE: “So, enforcing the law and protecting the country from terrorism has morphed into ‘spying on Americans’ in your MAGA-Republican circles?”
Only in your paranoid imagination. I note only that domestic intelligence and spying on the citizenry are two ways of saying the same thing.
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“Only in your paranoid imagination.”
Your comment was an accusation and that was made abundantly clear by your choice of words.
Following up on evidence pointing towards law breaking and planned acts of insurrection, sedition or terrorism is NOT “spying on Americans.” It is enforcing the law and stopping terrorists. And yes, the administration is striving to do both of those things.
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Wasn’t t the last president actively pushing for the old building to be demolished, a new one built in its place and thousands of FBI employees scattered to a few other cities?
The reason was to block competing hotels from snagging the site not far from his, as I recall.
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BINGO!
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