An architect's rendering shows what a proposed new FBI headquarters might look like on land now used as a parking lot by the Government Printing Office. Image courtesy of Arthur Cotton Moore.
Amid the 35 proposals to relocate the FBI’s headquarters on Pennsylvania Avenue—the area’s biggest economic development gem in years—is a surprising plan that might just keep the Bureau in downtown Washington, constructing a new building close to Union Station and answering the dreams of many senior FBI leaders.
The Union Station proposal—not previously reported—is backed by Republic Properties and renowned DC architect Arthur Cotton Moore and would provide the FBI with the full required 2.1 million square feet (2,107,242 to be exact) of new space. Republic Properties proposes to build on an empty lot—bordered by North Capitol Street, Massachusetts Avenue, Northwest, and New Jersey Avenue—currently used as parking for the Government Printing Office, which occupies the eastern portion of the block. The neighboring GPO building, which handles the printing of the Congressional Record and passports, among other projects, is underused and in need of renovation itself. Republic Properties is proposing renovations to the GPO facility, the addition of underground parking, and the construction of a new FBI headquarters.
While much of the attention around the headquarters move has focused on the suburbs—suggested sites include Springfield, Virginia, and Greenbelt, Maryland—many senior FBI officials have longed for a viable solution that would keep the Bureau’s 11,000 headquarters staff in downtown DC. The Hoover Building, built nearly 40 years ago and aging badly, has forced the FBI to split its headquarters staff across more than 20 annexes in Washington. Yet FBI officials are wary of moving to the suburbs, which would complicate relations with Congress, the White House, and especially the Department of Justice—currently just across Pennsylvania Avenue from the existing Hoover Building. FBI officials also hope to reopen its public tour, closed since 9/11, in a new headquarters, allowing the building to once again be a major stopping point for tourists.
Dear Mark Owen (a.k.a. Matt Bissonnette),
On Tuesday, I wrote a review of your new book, No Easy Day, about your role in the raid that killed Osama bin Laden. There are few easy days ahead of you. The government apparently is considering whether to take legal action against you for allegedly violating the terms of two nondisclosure agreements you signed while still in uniform that the Pentagon says remain in force today. And this administration, as you may already know, is not too fond of employees who talk about sensitive national security operations without asking permission.
The Pentagon says there are secrets in your book. It seems officials are preparing to move against you, possibly with an eye to indicting you. (They’ve already determined they can’t stop the sale of your book.) I’m not a lawyer, but I’ve written about leak investigations, the government prosecutors who run them, and the pledges government employees often sign to keep quiet about their work. We journalists also have to be cautious these days about whom we talk to and what secrets we publish. So here are some tips learned in the field that you might keep in mind as you mount your defense.
The French say it like “Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose.” The more things change, the more they stay the same.
This week unfortunately has brought a fresh reminder—two, in fact—that the FBI and the CIA continue to struggle to get along, more than a decade after the 9/11 attacks exposed a glaring—and deadly—lack of communication between the two cornerstones of the US national security apparatus.
A Washington Post story this week reports that the office of director of national intelligence, a post created after the September 11 attacks, has handed the FBI an “expanded role in coordinating the domestic intelligence-gathering activities of the CIA.”
Coincidentally, the National Security Archive at George Washington University released a trove of decade-old CIA documents dealing with the hunt for Osama bin Laden. While much of the media’s attention today has focused on the Counterterrorism Center’s budget woes before 9/11, one of the most striking documents is the CIA’s inspection report of its Counterterrorism Center from the summer of 2001 (PDF). Conducted while, unbeknownst to the agency, Mohamed Atta and the 9/11 hijackers were finalizing their plans to attack Washington and New York, the CIA inspector general’s routine investigation discussed the overall effectiveness of CTC. After generally giving the center good marks—despite its budget and staffing shortfalls—deep into the report, the IG raises the agency’s working relationship with the FBI, listed on an earlier page as one of its key relationships. “CTC described cooperative relations with the FBI,” the report said. “The growth in joint activities and cross assignments suggests that the relationship is now more institutionalized and less personality dependent.”
By Shane Harris
Think tanks and law firms in Washington, experts say, are targets of pervasive espionage by cyber spies who are stealing sensitive information on business and policy matters and are using their unwitting victims to better understand the intricacies of Washington decision-making. The FBI and computer security analysts have investigated intrusions aimed at dozens of organizations, including human rights groups, trade associations, and public relations firms, and the organizations share a common theme: They all work on issues of economic and political interest to the Chinese government.
One prominent organization that found itself an unwitting target of cyber spying is the Brookings Institution, which runs a policy center on China. Brookings' computer systems were penetrated last summer by an intruder who tricked a still-unknown number of employees into installing back doors on Brookings' networks, according to several people with knowledge of the incident.
"I can confirm that we did have an incident, and that we did take steps to address it," says Laurie Boeder, a spokesperson for Brookings, who declined to discuss details of how the intrusion was discovered and whether federal authorities were alerted to the breach. She also wouldn't comment on whether China was presumed to be responsible.
By delivering a bag containing $5,000 in cash to a drop site in an Arlington park, Mikhail Semenko fell into an elaborate trap set by the FBI. Photograph by Matthew Worden
It’s been a long time since I last saw my landlord, Mikhail Semenko. He was an affable twentysomething whose tiny Arlington one-bedroom apartment I rented for a short period during the summer of 2010. He worked what seemed like a low-impact job at a local travel agency, and spoke with a thick but understandable Russian accent. Our discussions never got too deep—whenever I saw him we talked mostly of rent checks and gas bills, spare keys and parking passes—but I liked him. He undercharged on the lease.
It’s a bad time to be a fugitive in the FBI’s crosshairs: The arrest Wednesday of James “Whitey” Bulger capped a stunning seven-week period that has seen the Bureau make progress in three of its most vexing and seemingly coldest cases.
Talk to just about any cop in Boston long enough and even today you’ll hear complaints about Whitey Bulger and the FBI’s corruption. I began my journalism career covering the cops beat in Boston, so over the years I’ve spent many hours speculating with them in Dunkin’ Donuts and squad cars about Whitey’s fate. Most cops I knew believed one of two scenarios: Either Whitey and his girlfriend, Catherine Greig, have been dead since days after they fled in December 1994—probably buried under a parking lot or a building foundation somewhere in suburban Boston—or that the FBI would never find them because Whitey had too much dirt on the Bureau.
Both scenarios were proven untrue with a dramatic late-night announcement that James “Whitey” Bulger, the notorious leader of the Winter Hill gang in South Boston, in 1999 the 458th person added to the Bureau’s “Ten Most Wanted” list, and perhaps the darkest stain on the FBI’s recent history, was caught after a tip from the public. Evidently, a member of the public responded to a recent high-profile push by the FBI to air information and pictures of Greig, concentrating on her rather than the fugitive boyfriend.
The arrest, coming just seven weeks after the killing of Osama bin Laden, removes from the FBI’s “Ten Most Wanted” list its two highest-profile fugitives—and two of the longest-listed fugitives. (Both bin Laden and Bulger were added in the summer of 1999, the al-Qaeda leader in June, the Boston mobster in August.) Only two current fugitives have spent more time on the list: Victor Manuel Gerena, a Puerto Rican robber, and escaped murderer Glen Stewart Godwin.
