The headquarters decision comes amid a turbulent period for the FBI. Public controversy is not new to the bureau. But fights over its power have grown more frequent and intense since 2016, when election-season cameos by FBI Director James Comey infuriated partisans of all stripes. Most recently, a declassified court opinion revealed that the bureau had improperly searched a key foreign intelligence database for information about people involved in Black Lives Matter and Jan. 6. In between, the FBI has been repeatedly dinged by courts and inspectors general for missteps related to surveillance and intelligence programs.

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Much of this traces back to longtime FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover, who ruled over the bureau for almost 50 years, from 1924 until his death in 1972.

… Hoover was also a collector of dark secrets, which he used ruthlessly to protect the bureau’s power and his own. Most notoriously, Hoover kept his own “official and confidential files,” which he withheld from the FBI’s ordinary recordkeeping system. In those files, Hoover hoarded “dirt” on presidents, members of Congress, activists (including Martin Luther King Jr.), and other public figures. Hoover’s FBI was a “secretive and insular” institution that became, in the words of Beverly Gage’s Pulitzer-winning biography “G-Man,” a “personal fiefdom unrivaled in U.S. history.”

Perhaps surprisingly, the FBI’s current headquarters building in Washington still bears Hoover’s name. On one level, that seems inappropriate. Given Hoover’s many misdeeds, the nation might “be well served if his name were removed from the bureau’s building,” as the late Judge Laurence Silberman argued. But on another level, it makes sense: Hoover’s influence lingers.