CIA Trivia
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45 free CIA trivia questions with answers — history quiz, new questions added Sep 2026.
CIA trivia for spy-thriller readers, Cold War history buffs and anyone who has wondered what actually goes on at Langley. The quiz opens with the agency's origins: 'Wild Bill' Donovan's wartime OSS, Truman's Central Intelligence Group, and the National Security Act of 1947 that created the CIA. It then follows the early Cold War under Allen Dulles: Operation Ajax in Iran, the coup in Guatemala, the U-2 and Gary Powers, and the disaster at the Bay of Pigs that cost Dulles his job. The middle rounds cover the darker files: MKUltra and LSD, the Phoenix Program, the Family Jewels, and the 1975 Church Committee that dragged it all into the open. Later questions take in the Stingers sent to Afghanistan, the raising of a Soviet submarine with a Howard Hughes cover story, Aldrich Ames and his Jaguar, the fake sci-fi film behind Argo, Kryptos and its unsolved fourth message, the naming of headquarters after George H. W. Bush, and the Abbottabad raid that killed Osama bin Laden. Questions run from easy to expert and every answer was checked against a reference page and carries its source. See also our spy agencies and Cold War quizzes.
30 of 45 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01The CIA's headquarters is in which Virginia community, whose name is shorthand for the agency itself?
Langley
Langley: in January 1993 a gunman fired on cars waiting at the light by its main gate, killing two CIA employees; he was caught in Pakistan in 1997.
Q 02The CIA was established by which 1947 law?
the National Security Act
The National Security Act of 1947 also created the National Security Council and merged the War and Navy departments under a new Secretary of Defense.
Q 03Which wartime organisation, abolished by Truman in 1945, was the CIA's predecessor?
the Office of Strategic Services
The Office of Strategic Services employed Julia Child, who at 6ft 2in was too tall for the women's services and assisted the developers of a shark repellent.
Q 04Which 'Wild Bill', a World War I hero, led America's wartime spy agency before the CIA existed?
William Donovan
William Donovan: the story goes that after he ran his WWI troops over a three-mile obstacle course in full packs, they dubbed him 'Wild Bill'.
Q 05Under a 2004 law, the head of the CIA reports to which official?
the Director of National Intelligence
The Director of National Intelligence post grew from the 9/11 Commission's call for one chief to unify the spy agencies, a role the CIA's director had held before.
Q 06Which country-by-country reference work did the CIA publish for decades before discontinuing it in 2026?
The World Factbook
The World Factbook: it began in 1962 as a classified CIA publication, and the first unclassified edition came out in 1971.
Q 07The CIA headquarters was named in 1999 after which former director who became president?
George H. W. Bush
George H. W. Bush took over in 1976 to restore agency morale, but Carter did not keep him on after winning the presidency.
Q 08A marble wall in the CIA's Old Headquarters Building bears a Biblical quotation about what setting you free?
the truth
The truth: Allen Dulles asked that the verse from John 8:32 be carved into the lobby wall.
Q 09Kryptos, the coded copper sculpture outside CIA headquarters, was created by which artist?
Jim Sanborn
Jim Sanborn: a CIA staffer cracked three of its four passages in 1998, but as of 2025 the fourth had still not been publicly solved.
Q 10Which not-for-profit venture firm did the CIA set up in 1999 to invest in technology start-ups?
In-Q-Tel
In-Q-Tel backed Keyhole, a satellite-mapping start-up; Google bought Keyhole in 2004, and its software became Google Earth.
Q 11Which CIA case officer, arrested in 1994, had been selling secrets to Moscow since volunteering to the KGB in 1985?
Aldrich Ames
Aldrich Ames: the names he handed the KGB led to the arrest and execution of Soviet officials who had been secretly working for US intelligence.
Q 12The CIA codename for the 1953 coup that overthrew Iran's prime minister Mohammad Mosaddegh was what?
Operation Ajax
Operation Ajax followed Mosaddegh's 1951 nationalisation of the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company, and Britain's MI6 backed the plot alongside the CIA.
Q 13The 1954 CIA-backed coup codenamed PBSuccess overthrew which Central American president?
Jacobo Árbenz
Q 21Who headed Project MKUltra, the CIA's mind-control programme?
Sidney Gottlieb
Sidney Gottlieb: Allen Dulles approved MKUltra on 13 April 1953, and its tests included giving LSD to unwitting subjects in social situations.
Q 22What symbol marks each fallen officer on the Memorial Wall in the CIA headquarters lobby?
A star
Each star carved into the white marble Memorial Wall of the Original Headquarters Building honours a CIA officer who died in the line of duty; many names are withheld from the accompanying Book of Honor.
Q 23Which CIA director ordered all MKUltra files destroyed in 1973, badly hampering later investigations?
Richard Helms
Jacobo Árbenz resigned on 27 June 1954 after a CIA radio station, the Voice of Liberation, persuaded listeners that a small rebel invasion was already winning.
Q 14In which country did the CIA run the main training camps for Brigade 2506 before the Bay of Pigs?
Guatemala
Guatemala: the brigade trained at CIA camps there, but Castro's forces defeated its April 1961 landing within days.
Q 15In Cuba, the Bay of Pigs invasion is known by the name of which beach where the fighting took place?
Playa Girón
Playa Girón: within days of the landing, Castro's forces had captured more than 1,100 invaders.
Q 16Allen Dulles, who left the CIA after the Bay of Pigs, later sat on which presidential commission?
the Warren Commission
The Warren Commission: two years after leaving the CIA under Kennedy, Dulles sat on the panel investigating Kennedy's assassination.
Q 17What was the codename of the post-Bay of Pigs sabotage campaign against Castro led by Lansdale and Harvey?
Operation Mongoose
Operation Mongoose: Lansdale's plan counted on a popular revolt inside Cuba, but in October 1962 U-2 photos showed Soviet missile sites there instead.
Q 18Which company designed the U-2 spy plane that the CIA flew over the Soviet Union?
Lockheed
Lockheed: its Skunk Works stripped the U-2 down to save weight so it could fly at around 70,000 feet.
Q 19Which CIA pilot was shot down in a U-2 over the Soviet Union in 1960?
Gary Powers
Francis Gary Powers was shot down near Sverdlovsk on 1 May 1960 and swapped for the Soviet spy Rudolf Abel on Berlin's Glienicke Bridge in February 1962.
Q 20What is the nickname of the U-2 spy plane?
Dragon Lady
Dragon Lady: in 1963 the CIA even flew U-2s off aircraft carriers, adding arrester hooks so they could land on deck.
Richard Helms ordered the records destroyed in 1973, but in 1977 a Freedom of Information search turned up surviving files misfiled among financial records.
Q 24MKUltra's 'Subproject 68', involving 'psychic driving', took place at the Allan Memorial Institute in which city?
Montreal
The Allan Memorial Institute is McGill University's psychiatric hospital in Montreal; there Donald Ewen Cameron played recorded messages to drugged patients for days on end.
Q 25In which country did the CIA's Phoenix Program of 1968-72 operate?
South Vietnam
South Vietnam: a 1968 CIA field assessment found Phoenix's attack on the Viet Cong infrastructure had disrupted it but not yet cut the Communists' ability to operate.
Q 26The internal 1973 compilation of the CIA's illegal activities is known by what nickname?
the Family Jewels
The Family Jewels, compiled on director James Schlesinger's order in 1973, catalogued illegal domestic surveillance, assassination plots and drug tests; Seymour Hersh's December 1974 exposé of them set off the Church and Pike inquiries.
Q 27The 1975 Senate committee that exposed MKUltra was chaired by a senator from which state?
Idaho
Idaho: Senator Frank Church chaired the committee, and its work led the Senate to create its permanent Intelligence Committee in 1976.
Q 28Operation CHAOS, exposed by Seymour Hersh in 1974, involved CIA officers infiltrating what?
the American antiwar movement
The American antiwar movement: begun under Johnson in 1967, CHAOS hunted for foreign backing of dissent and kept files on thousands of Americans.
Q 29Project Azorian used the ship Hughes Glomar Explorer in 1974 to try to raise what from the Pacific floor?
a Soviet submarine
A Soviet submarine: the grapple failed and most of the recovered section broke away, though the crew still hauled up the rest in secret.
Q 30What was the public cover story for the Glomar Explorer's mission?
deep-sea manganese mining
Deep-sea manganese mining: when the real mission leaked, the Ford administration would neither confirm nor deny it, which gave the world the 'Glomar response'.