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46 free CIA trivia questions with answers — history quiz, new questions added Aug 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 46 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 McLean in unincorporated Fairfax County, is shorthand for the CIA itself; Fort Meade is the NSA's home and Quantico the FBI's academy.
Q 02The CIA was established by which 1947 law?
the National Security Act
The National Security Act of 1947 created the CIA alongside the National Security Council; the separate CIA Act of 1949 then let the agency keep its budget, staffing and organisation out of public disclosure.
Q 03Which wartime organisation, abolished by Truman in 1945, was the CIA's predecessor?
the Office of Strategic Services
The Office of Strategic Services, the wartime spy and sabotage agency, was dissolved in October 1945; Truman set up the short-lived Central Intelligence Group in January 1946 before creating the CIA in 1947.
Q 04Which 'Wild Bill' headed the OSS and drafted the plan for a US intelligence service modelled on MI6?
William Donovan
William 'Wild Bill' Donovan led the OSS from 1942 to 1945; Roosevelt had first made him Coordinator of Information in July 1941, and British officer Dick Ellis is credited with drafting the blueprint.
Q 05Since 2004 the head of the CIA has reported to which official?
the Director of National Intelligence
The 2004 Intelligence Reform and Terrorism Prevention Act created the Director of National Intelligence, to whom the CIA director reports; before that the Director of Central Intelligence ran both the agency and the whole community.
Q 06Unlike the FBI, the CIA has no power to do what?
enforce the law
The CIA has no law-enforcement powers or domestic policing role; it focuses on foreign intelligence and has only limited authority to collect intelligence at home.
Q 07The CIA headquarters was named in 1999 after which former director who became president?
George H. W. Bush
George H. W. Bush ran the agency for just 357 days in 1976-77; the Langley compound was dedicated as the George Bush Center for Intelligence in 1999.
Q 08The Old Headquarters Building's marble wall bears a Biblical quotation about what setting you free?
the truth
'And ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free' (John 8:32) is carved in the lobby, chosen at the request of Allen Dulles.
Q 09Kryptos, the encrypted sculpture in the headquarters courtyard, was created by which artist in 1990?
Jim Sanborn
Jim Sanborn's Kryptos, dedicated in 1990, carries four encrypted passages; the first three were cracked in the 1990s, and the fourth became one of the world's most famous unsolved ciphers.
Q 10Which venture-capital arm did the CIA set up in 1999 to invest in technology start-ups?
In-Q-Tel
In-Q-Tel, founded in 1999 under director George Tenet, is a non-profit venture fund backing start-ups whose technology the CIA wants; Keyhole, later Google Earth, was one early bet.
Q 11Who was the CIA's first civilian director and its longest-serving?
Allen Dulles
Allen Dulles ran the CIA from 1953 to 1961, the longest tenure of any director; his brother John Foster Dulles was Eisenhower's Secretary of State and the namesake of Dulles airport.
Q 12The CIA codename for the 1953 coup that overthrew Iran's prime minister Mohammad Mosaddegh was what?
Operation Ajax
Operation Ajax (TPAJAX) was the CIA's name for the August 1953 coup; the MI6 side was Operation Boot, and Mosaddegh had nationalised the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company, later BP.
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, head of the Technical Services Staff, ran MKUltra from its start on Allen Dulles's order in April 1953; the programme dosed unwitting subjects with drugs for over a decade.
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-backed force under Carlos Castillo Armas invaded; the 'Voice of Liberation' radio station convinced Guatemalans the rebel victory was already a done deal.
Q 14In which country had the CIA trained Brigade 2506 before the Bay of Pigs invasion?
Guatemala
The CIA trained the exile Brigade 2506 at camps in Guatemala; the ships sailed from Nicaragua, and Castro's forces crushed the landing within three days after Kennedy withheld further air support.
Q 15In Cuba, the Bay of Pigs invasion is known by the name of which beach where the fighting took place?
Playa Girón
Cubans call it the Battle of Playa Girón, after the beach where the main force came ashore in the early hours of 17 April 1961; Playa Larga saw a secondary landing.
Q 16Which president forced the CIA director to resign after the Bay of Pigs?
Kennedy
Kennedy accepted Allen Dulles's resignation in November 1961; Dulles was later appointed to the Warren Commission investigating Kennedy's own 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, run by Edward Lansdale with William Harvey's Task Force W, began in late 1961; by 1963 Desmond FitzGerald was tasking Rolando Cubela to kill Castro even as Kennedy explored peace overtures.
Q 18The U-2 reconnaissance aircraft, developed with the Air Force, was designed to fly above what altitude?
70,000 feet
The idea was to stay beyond the reach of Soviet fighters, missiles and radar; a missile eventually proved otherwise.
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 20The U-2's nickname is what?
Dragon Lady
Dragon Lady is the U-2's nickname; Blackbird, Warthog and Aardvark belong to the SR-71, A-10 and F-111 respectively.
Richard Helms ordered the MKUltra records destroyed in January 1973, shortly before leaving; he also wiped the secret tapes of meetings in his own office, and only a cache of financial records survived.
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
Phoenix ran in South Vietnam with the Saigon government, targeting what the agency called the Viet Cong Infrastructure, the political and administrative arm of the insurgency.
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; with the House's Pike Committee and the Rockefeller Commission it made 1975 the 'Year of Intelligence'.
Q 28Operation CHAOS, exposed by the Church Committee, involved CIA officers infiltrating what?
the American antiwar movement
CHAOS, begun in 1967 under Johnson, had CIA officers pose as radicals to infiltrate the American antiwar movement, hunting for foreign funding that was never found.
Q 29Project Azorian used the ship Hughes Glomar Explorer in 1974 to try to raise what from the Pacific floor?
a Soviet submarine
The target was the Soviet submarine K-129, lost in March 1968 some 1,560 miles north-west of Hawaii; a section of the hull was recovered before the rest broke away.
Q 30What was the public cover story for the Glomar Explorer's mission?
deep-sea manganese mining
Howard Hughes's company said the Glomar Explorer was mining manganese nodules from the deep seabed; the later refusal to 'confirm or deny' its true purpose gave the world the term 'Glomar response'.