The F.B.I. director Kash Patel told bureau officials on Friday that he wanted to send 1,000 agents from the Washington area to field offices across the country, with another 500 support staff reassigned to the bureau’s sprawling campus in Alabama, people familiar with the matter said.
Mr. Patel, newly sworn in as director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation after being narrowly confirmed by the Senate, was widely expected to thin out the headquarters and other offices in the Capitol region. But the speed with which he has moved to do so has caught officials off guard and prompted concerns over the disruptions it might cause across the agency.
His timeline for identifying the employees who would go to field offices and Huntsville, Ala., was not immediately clear. Two former senior F.B.I. officials familiar with the matter said that agents would be sent to cities with high crime rates.
In a statement, the F.B.I. said: “Director Patel has made clear his promise to the American public that F.B.I. agents will be in communities focused on combating violent crime. He has directed F.B.I. leadership to implement a plan to put this promise into action.”
Mr. Patel had promised to shake up the bureau last year in an interview, making clear his hostility toward an agency he saw as biased against conservatives.
“I’d shut down the F.B.I. Hoover Building on Day 1 and reopen it the next day as a museum of the ‘deep state,’” Mr. Patel said on the podcast “The Shawn Ryan Show.” “Then, I’d take the 7,000 employees that work in that building and send them across America to chase down criminals. Go be cops. You’re cops — go be cops.”