The FBI director, Kash Patel, and the deputy director, Daniel Bongino, want to host a pilot session of the bureau’s vaunted National Academy class at the Redstone Arsenal in Alabama instead of at Quantico, in what skeptics believe is an idea driven more by their anti-Washington fervor than rational thought.

Earlier this month, Messrs. Patel and Bongino issued a directive to their National Academy Unit to implement a pilot session of their National Academy, a 10-week training session for law enforcement professionals from around the United States and the world, sometime in early 2026.

The directive took National Academy officials “understandably by surprise,” according to those familiar with the plan.

The NAU is currently putting together a report for FBI leadership to show what the program stands to gain and lose when moved to landlocked Huntsville, Alabama, from Quantico, with its relative proximity to the so-called Acela corridor.

“I feel it’s a little bit of an anti-D,C, bias that’s pushing them in that direction,” a former FBI National Academy Unit chief, Cory McGookin, told the Sun.  “I don’t 100 percent know where they currently are with facilities down there in Huntsville, but I do know we’ve been building Quantico over all these years to be a perfect fit for the National Academy,” Mr. McGoookin added.

In a May email from the FBI National Academy Associates Inc., a nonprofit association of National Academy graduates, there were still several challenges that had to be figured out before the pilot session at Redstone, like staffing, housing, and meals.

“Moving or attempting to recreate something similar in any other location will never be the same,” the FBINAA wrote in its email. “[The] position of the FBINAA at this time will be to express opposition to any move that might take the NA program away from its current location,” the FBINAA added.

The FBINAA executive director, Jeff McCormick, declined interview requests from the Sun. 

Launched in 1935, the National Academy is a selective 10-week program that offers senior law enforcement officials from both the United States and abroad undergraduate and graduate-level training in law, forensic science, and leadership training, among other areas, at the bureau’s  547-acre campus at Quantico, where it has been for 53 years. 

Through its affiliation with the University of Virginia, students can earn a certificate in criminal justice education from the school. 

National Academy students at Quantico, situated roughly 36 miles southwest of Washington, also have the opportunity to visit the White House and travel to New York and Philadelphia to meet with local law enforcement officials in those cities, among the many traditions that critics fear would be difficult to replicate from the Redstone’s location in Alabama.

Mr. Patel has never been shy about his love of the bureau’s state-of-the-art Redstone campus and his disdain for the FBI’s Washington footprint. In an interview with Maria Bartiromo on her Sunday morning Fox News show in May, he hailed the Redstone campus as “one of the crown jewels of the FBI.” 

Mr. Patel has already ordered 500 FBI employees to be moved to Redstone from Washington by the end of the year and has plans to send more than 1,400 FBI personnel to Huntsville over the course of the next three years. 

“We are not removing them out of Washington, D.C., to remove them. We need a place that allows their skills to be met, and it’s not in Washington, D.C., and tragically, it’s not Quantico either. I wish it worked,” Mr. Patel said during a budget hearing in May.

The FBI assistant director of the training division, Brian Dugan, who oversees the National Academy, was reportedly forced to retire shortly after taking the job in February.

But Mr. Patel is also facing a $500 million budget cut for 2026. New developments on the South Campus of the Redstone, which include a Range Complex and “Practical Problem Venues” facilities, are currently on hold. During an appropriations hearing, Mr. Patel said the FBI would need an additional $160 million to complete the development at the South Campus sometime in the next three years, after which an additional 1,300 to 1,400 FBI employees will be moved to Huntsville.

Moving the National Academy to Redstone, even for a pilot session, would come at a considerable cost, critics believe. Quantico already has the facilities needed — like lodging, dining hall, classrooms, and training staff — to run a National Academy session like clockwork, something that the Redstone campus currently lacks. The FBI would instead need to find hotel accommodations for more than 250 students, 35 of whom are traveling from outside the United States. 

“I understand the cost consideration, but as far as infrastructure, I don’t think there’s any consideration for Huntsville not being able to accommodate” a National Academy session, a former FBI Huntsville assistant section chief, Jim Shorter, told the Sun.

Virginia politicians from both sides of the aisle also questioned the timing and reasoning behind the pilot session.

“Relocating the FBI Academy from Quantico to Huntsville makes no sense and is not an efficient use of taxpayer dollars,” Senator Kaine,  a Democrat, said in a statement.

“I am speaking with leadership at the FBI and DOJ to make sure Quantico remains the centerpiece of FBI training now and in the future,” Governor Youngkin told the Washington Post.

An FBI spokesman did not respond to questions regarding the move.

The National Academy at Quantico is rich with traditions like the “Yellow Brick Road,” a “grueling” 6.1-mile wooded trail that serves as the final test of the Academy’s fitness challenge. The National Academy’s proximity to Washington made it easier to bring in various national security and law enforcement figures of note. 

The retired Canadian law enforcement superintendent, David D. Brown, attended the National Academy in 2014, where he heard lectures by a former Chicago Police Department commissioner and Washington Metropolitan Police chief, Charles H. Ramsey, and the former USS Cole commanding officer, Kirk Lippold.

“That’s the kind of caliber of instruction we were constantly given,” Mr. Brown said. 

A Croatian police officer and National Academy graduate, Kristijan Ilovača, said attending the program “raised the quality of the work of the organization we come from.”

The National Academy campus is sacred ground to many, and while Redstone is the FBI’s “unofficial second headquarters,” many remain doubtful it will match the experience and lore that Quantico already has to offer.

“When I was running the National Academy, it was so important for me to protect the program, because it has a history … and the desire for so many people to want to come [to the Academy] is so much because of that history and lore,” Mr. McGookin told the Sun.

Relocating the National Academy to Redstone “could really, in my opinion, do a lot of harm.”