FBI seeks nearly $14 million for headquarters

KRT Wire | 02/19/2006 | FBI seeks nearly $14 million for headquarters

FBI seeks nearly $14 million for headquarters
BY ANDREW ZAJAC
Chicago Tribune

WASHINGTON - Its ranks swollen by thousands of new agents, linguists and analysts, as well as intelligence operatives from other agencies, the FBI is looking for new space to consolidate offices scattered in about a half-dozen downtown buildings.

Tucked into the bureau's proposed 2007 budget is a request for $13.8 million earmarked in part "to fund the FBI headquarters annex."

If Congress goes along with President Bush's recommendation, the FBI budget would top $6 billion, an 87 percent increase since 2001 when the Sept. 11 attacks forced the bureau to shift its mission from primarily crime-fighting to a focus on counterterrorism.

In that span, FBI employment has grown to about 30,000, among them more than 1,000 new agents and about 2,000 other employees, most of them linguists and analysts hired to bolster the bureau's capacity to collect and review intelligence.

The ramp up of anti-terror activity has overfilled the FBI's 31-year-old, 11-story headquarters building, which occupies a block along Pennsylvania Avenue.

A bureau spokesman said the annex location has not been selected, but that it will be in existing office space.

Also included in the budget is $100 million for a yet-to-be-built case management computer system, bringing the total set aside for the much-delayed project to nearly $200 million.

The proposed budget reflects a need for the bureau's infrastructure to catch up with the hiring binge, and accommodate the specialized needs of counterterror work.

It includes $33 million for sound- and electronic surveillance-proof rooms in bureau offices so that top secret material, such as that connected to anti-terror investigations, can be examined.

It also calls for about $18 million to upgrade FBI training facilities at Quantico, Va.

The $100 million for the new case management system, code-named Sentinel, follows $94 million set aside in last year's budget, the FBI spokesman said.

Sentinel is a successor to the FBI's Virtual Case File project, which was scuttled in early 2005 after four years and a cost of at least $104 million, plus a huge helping of embarrassment to the bureau.

Last June, the bureau disputed a published account that Sentinel could cost upwards of $800 million, but has declined to offer its own estimate.

At the time, an FBI official said the bureau expected to pick a contractor for Sentinel by the end of 2005, but the contract still has not been awarded.