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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 Bureau of Investigation was formed in July 1908, when the attorney general hired 34 agents 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
Charles Joseph Bonaparte, attorney general from 1906 to 1909, organized the Bureau in 1908; he was a grandson of Napoleon's brother Jérôme and Jérôme's American wife Elizabeth Patterson.
Q 03Which president pushed to create an investigative service answering only to the attorney general?
Theodore Roosevelt
Theodore Roosevelt, a champion of vigorous federal enforcement, backed the plan; McKinley's 1901 assassination had stoked fears of anarchists and the Oregon land fraud scandal showed 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
The Mann Act of 1910, better known as the White Slave Traffic Act, banned transporting women across state lines for 'immoral purposes' and handed the young Bureau its first big enforcement job.
Q 06In what year did the agency officially take the name Federal Bureau of Investigation?
1935
It became the Federal Bureau of Investigation in 1935, after a spell as the United States Bureau of Investigation and then, from 1933, the Division of Investigation alongside the Bureau of Prohibition.
Q 07For how many years did J. Edgar Hoover run the Bureau?
48
Hoover led the Bureau for 48 years, from 1924 until his death in May 1972, serving under eight presidents; Nixon was taped 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
Calvin Coolidge's attorney general Harlan Fiske Stone named the 29-year-old Hoover acting director in May 1924; Herbert Hoover was no relation.
Q 10What was J. Edgar Hoover's first job, taken at age 18?
Messenger at the Library of Congress
Hoover took a job as a messenger at the Library of Congress in 1913 while studying law at night; 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
Hoover was born on New Year's Day, 1 January 1895, on Capitol Hill in Washington, D.C., where a stained-glass window in Capitol Hill United Methodist Church was later dedicated to him.
Q 12In what year did the FBI's Scientific Crime Detection Laboratory officially open?
1932
The FBI's crime laboratory opened on 24 November 1932 in a single room at Bureau headquarters; Hoover created it to professionalize investigations with forensic science.
Q 13Outside which Chicago movie house was John Dillinger shot dead by Bureau agents in July 1934?
The Biograph Theater
Q 21What did the name COINTELPRO stand for?
Counter-Intelligence Program
COINTELPRO, the FBI's Counter-Intelligence Program, ran from 1956 to 1971 to disrupt domestic political groups; 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 burglars hit the FBI's resident agency in Media, Pennsylvania, on 8 March 1971 and mailed the stolen files to newspapers; the Washington Post was the first to publish them.
Q 23Which FBI deputy director was Watergate's 'Deep Throat'?
Mark Felt
Dillinger was shot leaving the Biograph Theater on Lincoln Avenue on 22 July 1934 after brothel keeper Ana Cumpănaș, later mythologized as the 'Woman in Red', tipped off agents.
Q 14Which FBI Chicago office chief won fame for the Dillinger and Pretty Boy Floyd cases?
Melvin Purvis
Melvin Purvis ran the Chicago field office and was present at both the Dillinger and Floyd shootings in 1934; Ness worked for the Prohibition Bureau, not the FBI, and Hamer was the 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 1928 Supreme Court case ruled wiretaps of a bootlegger did not breach the Fourth Amendment?
Olmstead v. United States
Olmstead v. United States (1928) held that tapping bootlegger Roy Olmstead's phone lines without entering his property was no search; Katz overturned it in 1967 and Congress required wiretap warrants in 1968.
Q 17Early Bureau homicide investigations included the murders of members of which Native American nation?
Osage
The Osage murders of the 1920s, in which Oklahoma tribe members were killed for their oil headrights, became one of the young Bureau's first big homicide cases, 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
In Ex parte Quirin (1942) the Court upheld trying the saboteurs before a military commission; the FBI had arrested all eight after George Dasch turned himself in, and six were electrocuted on 8 August 1942.
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
Hoover argued the mass removal of Japanese Americans was unnecessary, since the FBI had already detained over 5,500 Issei men from its custodial list within weeks of Pearl Harbor; Roosevelt signed Executive Order 9066 anyway in February 1942.
Mark Felt, the Bureau's associate director, fed Bob Woodward of the Washington Post after being passed over for director in 1972; he retired in 1973 and only revealed himself as Deep Throat in 2005.
Q 24In what year did the FBI officially announce its Ten Most Wanted Fugitives list?
1950
The Ten Most Wanted Fugitives list debuted on 14 March 1950 after 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
Gerena, wanted for a 1983 Wells Fargo depot robbery in Connecticut, was listed from May 1984 to December 2016, 32 years; the FBI insists the list is unranked and 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
Rogge, a bank robber, surrendered at the US embassy in Guatemala City in May 1996 after a viewer of the FBI's new website recognized his photo, the list's first internet-assisted capture.
Q 27The FBI Academy, where new agents train, is located in which Virginia town?
Quantico
The FBI Academy opened at Quantico in 1972 on 385 acres of woodland inside the Marine Corps base; it lent its name to the 2015 TV series Quantico.
Q 28How many field offices does the FBI maintain in major US cities?
56
The FBI has 56 field offices in major US cities, each led by a special agent in charge (an assistant director in the largest), backed by hundreds of smaller resident agencies.
Q 29What are the FBI's overseas offices in US embassies and consulates called?
Legal Attachés
Legal Attachés, or 'legats', are FBI agents posted to US embassies and consulates, more than 60 offices worldwide, mainly to coordinate with foreign police and security services.
Q 30The elite Hostage Rescue Team was formed in 1982 ahead of which event?
The 1984 Los Angeles Olympics
HRT was created in 1982 to be ready for the 1984 Los Angeles Olympics, with the 1972 Munich massacre as the lesson; unlike part-time field-office SWAT teams, HRT is a full-time tactical unit.