50 free FBI trivia questions with answers — history quiz, new questions added Aug 2026.
This FBI trivia quiz covers the Federal Bureau of Investigation from its 1908 creation by a grandnephew of Napoleon to the modern Bureau of 56 field offices and Legal Attachés in embassies around the world. There are questions on J. Edgar Hoover's 48-year reign and the ten-year term limit it inspired, the 1930s war on Dillinger and Pretty Boy Floyd, wartime spy cases, COINTELPRO and the burglary that exposed it, Deep Throat, the Hostage Rescue Team, Ruby Ridge and Waco, the Unabomber, Robert Hanssen's dead drop, Whitey Bulger's capture and the Ten Most Wanted list. You will also meet the Bureau's institutions: the Academy at Quantico, the crime lab, the CJIS complex in West Virginia, the Behavioral Analysis Unit that inspired Criminal Minds, and the standard-issue Glock. Difficulty runs from questions any true-crime fan can answer to details for people who know which Supreme Court case first blessed FBI wiretaps. Every answer was checked against Wikipedia's articles on the Bureau, its people and its cases, and each question quotes the sentence that supports it.
30 of 50 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01In what year was the Bureau of Investigation, forerunner of the FBI, created?
1908
The attorney general hired 34 people with Justice Department expense funds after Congress barred him from borrowing Secret Service men.
Q 02Which attorney general organized the Bureau of Investigation in 1908?
Charles Bonaparte
He was a grandson of Napoleon's brother Jérôme and his American wife Elizabeth Patterson.
Q 03Which president pushed to create an investigative service answering only to the attorney general?
Theodore Roosevelt
McKinley's 1901 assassination had stoked fears of anarchists, and the Oregon land fraud scandal exposed how short-staffed Justice was.
Q 04Who was the Bureau's first 'chief', the title now called director?
Stanley Finch
Bonaparte only notified Congress of the new agency in December 1908, months after it began work.
Q 05The Bureau's first official task was surveying brothels to prepare to enforce which 1910 law?
The Mann Act
It was better known as the White Slave Traffic Act.
Q 06In what year did the agency officially take the name Federal Bureau of Investigation?
1935
It had briefly been the United States Bureau of Investigation and then the Division of Investigation, linked to the Bureau of Prohibition.
Q 07For how many years did J. Edgar Hoover run the Bureau, from 1924 until his death in 1972?
48
He was appointed by Calvin Coolidge and outlasted eight presidents; Nixon was recorded in 1971 explaining why he dared not fire him.
Q 08After Hoover's death, Congress limited future FBI directors to how long in office?
Ten years
Since 1968 directors have also needed Senate confirmation, a rule that did not apply to Hoover as the incumbent.
Q 09Which president appointed J. Edgar Hoover to lead the Bureau in 1924?
Calvin Coolidge
Herbert Hoover was no relation; J. Edgar was a Washington, D.C. native.
Q 10What was J. Edgar Hoover's first job, taken at age 18?
Messenger at the Library of Congress
The library was half a mile from his home, and biographers say its cataloguing culture shaped the FBI's obsession with files.
Q 11On what date in 1895 was J. Edgar Hoover born?
New Year's Day
He was born on Capitol Hill in Washington, D.C., where a stained-glass window in a Methodist church is now dedicated to him.
Q 12In what year did the FBI's Scientific Crime Detection Laboratory officially open?
1932
Hoover created it to professionalize investigations; the lab now handles most of the Bureau's DNA and physical evidence work.
Q 13Outside which Chicago movie house was John Dillinger shot dead by Bureau agents in July 1934?
The Biograph Theater
Brothel owner Ana Cumpănaș, later mythologized as the 'Woman in Red', had tipped off authorities.
Q 21What did the name COINTELPRO stand for?
Counter-Intelligence Program
Its targets included the Southern Christian Leadership Conference and Martin Luther King Jr.
Q 22COINTELPRO was exposed after activists burgled an FBI office in March 1971 in which Pennsylvania town?
Media
The Citizens' Commission to Investigate the FBI mailed the stolen files to newspapers including The Harvard Crimson.
Q 23Which FBI deputy director was Watergate's 'Deep Throat'?
Mark Felt
He fed the Washington Post while his boss was on sick leave, resigned in 1973 under suspicion, and only confirmed it in 2005.
Q 14Which agent, key to getting Dillinger and Pretty Boy Floyd, later served with Patton in WWII?
Melvin Purvis
Ness worked for the Prohibition Bureau, not the FBI; Hamer was a Texas Ranger who ambushed Bonnie and Clyde.
Q 15Which gangster was NOT among those the FBI lists as caught or killed in the 1930s 'War on Crime'?
Al Capone
Capone was brought down for tax evasion by Treasury agents; the Bureau's roll call also includes Alvin 'Creepy' Karpis.
Q 16Which 1927 Supreme Court case ruled wiretaps of a bootlegger did not breach the Fourth Amendment?
Olmstead v. United States
Katz overturned it in 1967, after which Congress required warrants for wiretaps under the Omnibus Crime Control Act.
Q 17Early Bureau homicide investigations included the murders of members of which Native American nation?
Osage
The 1920s oil-wealth killings in Oklahoma were later dramatized in Killers of the Flower Moon.
Q 18Under which Supreme Court case were six of eight captured Nazi saboteurs executed during World War II?
Ex parte Quirin
The FBI arrested all eight; the case is still cited in debates over military tribunals.
Q 19The joint US-UK Venona Project, in which the FBI was heavily involved, broke the codes of which country?
The Soviet Union
Hoover ran the FBI's side of it but did not tell the CIA about the project until 1952.
Q 20Which wartime policy did Hoover oppose that Roosevelt then enacted under Executive Order 9066?
Mass removal of Japanese Americans
The FBI had already detained more than 5,500 Issei men from its custodial list within weeks of Pearl Harbor.
Q 24In what year did the FBI officially announce its Ten Most Wanted Fugitives list?
1950
It grew out of a chat between Hoover and an International News Service editor about publicizing the Bureau's 'toughest guys'; robber Thomas J. Holden was the first name.
Q 25Machetero member Víctor Manuel Gerena spent how long on the Ten Most Wanted list, longer than anyone else?
32 years
He was added in 1984. The FBI insists the list is unranked: nobody is officially 'number one'.
Q 26Leslie Isben Rogge, who surrendered in 1996, was the first Most Wanted fugitive caught thanks to what?
The FBI's new website
He turned himself in at the US embassy in Guatemala City after being recognized online.
Q 27The FBI Academy, where new agents complete a 21-week course, is located in which Virginia town?
Quantico
It opened in 1972 on 385 acres of woodland and lent its name to a 2015 TV series.
Q 28How many field offices does the FBI maintain in major US cities?
56
They are backed by more than 400 resident agencies in smaller cities; each field office's senior officer also represents the director of national intelligence.
Q 29What are the FBI's overseas offices in US embassies and consulates called?
Legal Attachés
There are about 60 LEGAT offices plus 15 sub-offices, mainly for coordinating with foreign security services.
Q 30The elite Hostage Rescue Team was formed in 1982 ahead of which event?
The 1984 Los Angeles Olympics
The 1972 Munich massacre was the lesson; unlike local FBI SWAT teams, HRT does no investigating.