I like tours. From state-of-the-art factories containing proprietary technology to semi-legal subterranean dwellings, as a journalist I get to visit many places the public usually never sees. So it’s no wonder I jumped at the opportunity to see Tampa’s new Federal Bureau of Investigation building on Gray Street in the Westshore area of Tampa. Only a small percentage of the public has seen the seven-month-old building.
“[Tours] are only for a select few,” FBI spokesperson and tour guide Carol Michalik tells me. “We don’t open up our building to the public.”
The FBI is like that paranoid friend who never lets strangers into his house. You know, the guy that has an intercom at his front door, dogs prowling the property and demands you leave your friends in the car while he shows you his large gun collection.
Of course, the FBI goes a little bit further. Although I’m allowed to skip the full-body cavity search, my entry to the agency’s fortress is preceded by a quick background check, a perusal of my car, X-ray of my personal items and the standard metal detector wand treatment. No cell phones. No cameras.
FBI officials have good reason to be careful. They just moved into the $32-million building in January, and they want to keep the new car smell that still hangs in the air.
Then there is that whole terrorism thing. Large-scale attacks, like the Oklahoma City bombing and the World Trade Center tragedy, tend to make people a little edgy.
The wariness rubs off on me as I approach the double-doors leading me inside this glass and metal bastion. I enter an expansive lobby with 20-foot high ceilings and a huge FBI seal on the floor. When I let the receptionist know of my arrival, I’m given a clip-on badge — number 007 — and directed to one of the squishy chairs surrounding an unreachable coffee table. A fake plant sits by me. On the other side of the lobby is the same set of four chairs, coffee table and fake plant.
While I wait for my tour guide, I get the uneasy feeling my every move is being monitored — not too far-fetched considering the four cameras placed symmetrically around the room. When I’m at the height of my anxiousness, Michalik comes out to greet me. I stand up to meet her and as I place my notebook into my back pocket, she steps back.
“What are you putting in your pocket?” she asks nervously.
Puzzled, I show her my notebook and she looks relieved. Perhaps there was an incident with a previous reporter?
After punching in several digits on the door’s keypad, Michalik leads me down a hall. I am officially in the belly of the beast.
Initially, I was a little worried when I agreed to tour the FBI’s new building. For one, you never know what unpaid parking tickets you’ve left in other states and if they’ve entered federal felony status. I’ve also had friends who talk angrily about their visit to the J. Edgar Hoover Building in Washington, D.C., and the obvious government propaganda shoved down their throats.
But after I saw Michalik, I was more at ease. The stylish, suit-wearing nine-year FBI employee still seemed new to the tour process, sometimes reading directly from a several-page tour guidebook. She has only given “a dozen” tours since the building’s January opening, mostly to Boy Scouts and Rotary-type clubs. After formalities, she quickly resumed a down-to-earth conversation with me.
Michalik confides she had never thought about working for the FBI in the beginning stages of her career.
“I had a girlfriend who worked for the FBI,” she says. “She suggested it when I was between jobs.”
“It took over a year to get in,” she adds. “It was the best decision.”
She beams about the agency’s new digs, especially now that she has a real office that overlooks Tampa Bay. Her old office “was in a converted closet with no windows,” she says. “It was very small.”
After passing the polygraph testing room and several offices, we come to the firearms training department, consisting of two offices, a virtual training room, a vaulted door carrying agents’ standard issue weapons and a glass case featuring the FBI’s arsenal since the turn of the century. An authentic Thompson machine gun hangs beside the disturbingly toy-like M-16.
Next, Michalik takes me through several hallways, passing by human resources and the departments you would find in any corporate setting until we get to the vehicle repair shop. Long-time mechanic Rick [who declined to give his full name] is in charge of servicing the FBI’s 200 vehicles, most of them four-door sedans or sport utility vehicles.
Rick says FBI vehicles are not marked in any way — to preserve anonymity — but carry a few special features, like extra locks in the trunk. Vehicles are acquired a number of different ways, including drug busts. That’s how they got a Lamborghini a short time ago.
“I liked that car,” Michalik says with a grin.
After chatting with Rick, Michalik and I head upstairs to the language translation center.
“After [9/11] we brought on a tremendous amount of translators,” she says, showing me a large room filled with cubicles topped by various flags. Al-Jazeera, the controversial Arabic news channel, plays on an elevated TV in one of the room’s corners.
On the same floor as the translation center lie the agency’s brand-new fitness center and a break room that would move any full-time cubicle worker to tears. Besides a massive state-of-the-art eating area with almost every type of appliance lining the counter, agents have the choice of sitting inside or out on a screened-in terrace overlooking a marshy area of Tampa Bay.
The building’s third level is home to the agency’s various squads: cyber crimes, violent crimes, white-collar crime and the joint terrorism task force. While most of agencies are spread out among rows of cubicles — surprisingly devoid of any decoration — the latter department is tucked behind a vaulted door.
“There are many [doors] I can’t even get into,” Michalik says. “They’re real sticklers.”
Just then an older man opens the door and eyes us suspiciously. He disappears downstairs and we decide to keep moving.
She leads me to the building’s surveillance center. A man is sitting on a chair, eyes locked on all the cameras in the building. The Fox News Channel plays on a huge screen in the middle of the smaller closed-circuit televisions.
We speed through the fourth, and final, floor of offices and training rooms. On our way back downstairs, I ask if I can see the interrogation rooms. I’m surprised to hear I can.
Officially, they are called “public interview rooms,” and they are nothing like I expected them to be. The three rooms, about the size of an average office, seem not only non-threatening but also comfortable. Framed pictures of sail boats and palm trees line the walls. An older desk separates two plush chairs. The rooms are nicely air-conditioned and the walls have no specks of blood. I’m impressed. The only thing that separates these rooms from any other office is the window on the doors. Instead of a two-way mirror, the small door window is covered by white blinds, allowing an agent to peek into the room from the outside. Oddly, any interviewee inside would also be able to peer back through the window. We agree it is a non-practical design.
I thank my gracious host and exit the building sans search. As I approach my car, in a parking lot across the street for security reasons, I look back at the building. The front gate guard is still eyeing me and his eyes follow me down the road.
This article appears in Jul 26 – Aug 1, 2006.
