WASHINGTON — There are moments when Judiciary Square appears all but abandoned, with D.C.’s federal trials, court appearances and grand jury matters at a standstill until June.
But the FBI’s Washington field office remains operational in its own corner of the neighborhood, the small fortress of a building humming, as agents confront how to operate in the middle of a pandemic.
Kevin Vorndran, acting special agent in charge of the FBI’s Washington Field Criminal Division, discussed with WUSA9 how the bureau is protecting its agents and the public during the grip of coronavirus.
Below are excerpts of the conversation, minimally edited for length and clarity:
WUSA9: Has the need to socially distance and reduce close contact with others put any cases on hold, or reprioritized investigations?
Vorndran: We’re always going to prioritize our work, whether that’s during a pandemic or in normal times. So, we’ve taken a similar approach now. We’ve had to be much more deliberate about the situations where we’re willing to put our workforce into the community, just to protect their health and welfare, and of course, the health and welfare of the communities. So by deliberate I mean, the mission-critical work that we need to do in our communities continues to be done. The work where we have more flexibility on timing – we make more deliberate decisions on putting our workforce out into the communities, where they may be exposed to the virus, or, we’re exposing our communities to unnecessary risk.
WUSA9: Now that society has largely shut down, has travel for agents working investigations diminished as well?
Vorndran: We have been very specific with travel. We will limit operational travel, basically to the point where, if it’s operationally mission-critical, we’ll permit the travel to occur. But if it isn’t mission-critical for the travel to occur what we’ll do is, rely on our FBI agents and workforce in other parts of the country to do that work for us to keep those investigations and operations moving forward.
WUSA9: Talk to us about personal protective equipment, PPE. Agents need gear if they’re going out in the field. Does the bureau have the PPE it needs?
Vorndran: At this point, we do have the PPE we require to continue and sustain operations. We assign the appropriate personal protective equipment in those cases, and both enforcement operations and investigations continue to move forward as our communities should expect from us. We’ve been prepared prior to the pandemic for any kind of crisis situation that would come relative to PPE. We’re very specific about what gets issued out, and to whom. And that is based on a priority exercise of what’s going on in the field office in the division that particular day.
WUSA9: Give us a sense of the mission-critical matters that are still in motion or the cases that have been brought to a conclusion during the pandemic?
Vorndran: We continue to be actively involved in the COVID-19 task force with the U.S. Department of Justice to look at price gouging, hoarding, frauds that are being conducted and manipulated by criminals to take advantage of the uncertain times. We’ve had enforcement operations on violent crime against children… And back in early March, we had the arrest of a DOD linguist on espionage charges. So those are a few examples of what rises to the level of mission-critical.