Associate Magazine - FBINAA - Q4 - 2022

Continued from "The FBI Academy’s 50th Anniversary", on page 8

The Korean War led to another surge in training needs, leading to additional expansion at Quantico including setting up auxiliary ranges on the new expansion of the base West of U.S. Highway 1. It was the expansion of the foreign training side of the FBI National Academy program a few years later that set in motion the events leading to 1972. Our aging Academy buildings were not up to the demands for training that the Kennedy and Johnson administration pressed. Discussions on the need to expand and modernize the FBI Academy presence at Quantico ensued. As ever, the USMC was on board and in 1966 the General Services Admin istration broached the idea with Congress, noting that “current facilities for the Academy at Quantico are wholly inadequate and the new project is one of high priority.” President Johnson wanted the Bureau to greatly expand its NA training but was in the midst of pushing a federal austerity pro gram to offset his “Great Society” spending. In the end, according to former Bureau executive Cartha De Loach , the Bureau traded a GS 14 position for a Johnson signature on a $40 million appropria tion to get the campus going, a typical LBJ type deal. With this appropriation passed, plans for a new academic style campus in the Guadalcanal Area of the expanded Quantico base took off. Construction began soon after, and on May 7, 1972, the FBI Academy opened its doors. The campus covered hundreds of acres and included ten new buildings and six firearms ranges. Like a college campus, it had two dormitory buildings, an exten sive and central library, an auditorium, a lecture hall, a gymna sium, a cafeteria, 23 fully equipped classrooms, and more. A bit more than a month later, on June 26, 1972, the first expanded FBI National Academy class commenced at Quantico with 200 students attending the session. It was the 90th Session of the NA and the first new training cohort to begin since the Academy opened its doors. Two weeks later, the first new Agents class began, opening with yet another milestone in Bureau his tory – the first women FBI agent trainees. Following these firsts, the number of NA classes per year doubled, eventually increasing ten-fold from our 1960s highs. New Agent classes increased too as the Bureau’s agent rolls increased, but the rate did not match the multiplication of NA classes. continued on page 11

diary at the time that on his second day as a new agent (May, 1935), his class “Left Wash 4:00 p.m.; Arriving Fort Washington by bus at 5:00 – Show at nite – living in tents – Rain.” At 5:00 a.m. the next morning, Sloan and classmates were up and shooting pistols at 25 yards, alternating slow and rapid shooting. Hank was “highest at Rookies” as he and his colleagues turned into bed early, “nearly frozen.” The next day “pistol work continued” as well as instruction in the 30.06 rifle and Colt Monitory Machine Guns. And the third day, the .351 Auto was added with “bobbing and walking targets with pistol,” one of the early forms of Hogan’s Alley training first introduced by Army and law enforcement in the 1920s. Sloan’s experience was at Camp Ritchie, where his NA Class was trained, but it was the same across all facilities the Bureau used and Quantico soon became a clear favorite due to the quality of its facilities and availability of former Marine Corps instructors to help. The birth of the FBI’s National Police Training School (soon to be known as the FBI National Academy) occurred not long after Sloan graduated. On July 29, 1935, the NA’s predecessor wel comed a class of 23 U.S. law enforcement officers to share its prac tice and vision of professional police training with them in order to spur the creation of more local and state training opportunities for American police. Not surprisingly, the need for access to firearms ranges dramatically increased and the Bureau remained indebted to generosity of various Services and local police who made their facilities available to us. International peace was short lived. The military threats of Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan were rising, and our service personnel numbers were ticking up and Service facilities were more in demand. A more important factor in the need for Bureau specific training spaces was that the average firearms use of military and police shooters were very different. In a nutshell – police experience more quick, short-range engagements; military infantry sees more long gun based shooting. Dedicated, law enforcement-oriented firearms ranges were needed, and local law enforcement ranges were neither sufficient in quality nor quantity to help address the problem. The USMC leadership at Quantico had a solution, offering us space on Barnett Avenue, the heart of the base at Quantico, and land on the base to begin developing ranges specific to our training needs. Congress was brought on board and an appropriation was quickly approved. In the fall of 1939, construction began, and in the spring of 1940 a multi-story building that included dormi tory space for 64, two classrooms, dining and kitchen facilities, a gymnasium, and a small gun-cleaning room and vault was finished and immediately put into use. Training for both NA and NAC programs alternated between Washington, D.C.’s Old Post Office Building and Quantico, as a steady stream of agent and law enforcement training classes made use of Quantico. The world was at war, and the United States had been on the brink of joining. With the Pearl Harbor attack, needs exploded. The Bureau doubled beds in the dormitory and even borrowed space in nearby Marine dorms even as Marines needs multiplied too. Despite such growing needs, the USMC continued to help us meet our training needs even as it addressed its own. Additions to our Barnett Avenue Academy Building and regular expansion of our dedicated firearms ranges led to the paving of “Mud Flats” and a multiplication of additional ranges in order to keep pace with Bureau and National Academy growth.

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