The "Frank F. Church Federal Building" Act (HR 4279)

This bill would redesignate the federal building housing the Federal Bureau of Investigation's headquarters, located at 935 Pennsylvania Avenue Northwest in the District of Columbia, commonly known as the J. Edgar Hoover Federal Building, as the Frank F. Church Federal Building.

The exemplary career of Senator Frank F. Church of Idaho serves to remind us of how intelligence services ought to be conducted. Senator Church sought to define the limits to the powers of investigative agencies, and sought to check their excesses and abuses of power. He led investigations into unconstitutional intelligence-gathering activities by the CIA and FBI, and laid the groundwork for the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA), which requires warrants for wiretapping or other methods of spying on American Citizens. It is his work that the Bush Administration tramples on, as well as the rights of US citizens, in this most recent wiretapping scandal.

This renaming would serve as a symbolic message that Americans recognize the importance of placing and upholding limits on the exercise of federal and executive powers. Maintaining the ability of the citizenry to check the power of the executive was one of the founding principles of our democracy. Continuing to name the FBI headquarters building after J. Edgar Hoover, a controversial and paranoid figure whose overzealous pursuit of alleged subversives shattered many lives, leaves in place a symbolic message that federal officials and intelligence officers have a green light to engage in extra-legal and illegal measures and get away with it.