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50 free J. Edgar Hoover trivia questions with answers — history quiz, new questions added Aug 2026.
This J. Edgar Hoover trivia quiz covers the man who ran America's federal police for 48 years under eight presidents and built both the modern FBI and a machine for blackmailing the powerful. The easy questions cover the agency, the presidents at either end of his tenure, the gangster shot outside a Chicago cinema and the building that bears his name. From there the quiz walks through the career: the Library of Congress messenger job, the Palmer Raids, the Coolidge appointment, the fingerprint files and crime lab, the G-Man image, the Mafia he denied existed and the wiretaps Roosevelt authorised. The hard end covers the plan to suspend habeas corpus and detain 12,000 Americans, COINTELPRO and the Media burglary, the Church Committee, the King blackmail letter, the Warren Commission, the Truman 'Gestapo' quote, Clyde Tolson, the beagles and Cairn terriers, the lying in state, the ten-year term limit passed after his death, and the actors from Broderick Crawford to Leonardo DiCaprio who have played him. Every answer was checked against J. Edgar Hoover's encyclopaedia entry before publishing and the supporting sentence is stored with each question. Our FBI, Cold War and US presidents quizzes are natural next stops.
30 of 50 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Under how many US presidents did Hoover serve as head of the Bureau and then the FBI?
8
From the president who appointed him in 1924 to the one in office when he died in 1972.
Q 02For how many years in total did Hoover lead the Bureau of Investigation and the FBI?
48
He led the Bureau from 1924 and its successor agency until his death in 1972.
Q 03Which president first appointed Hoover director of the Bureau of Investigation in 1924?
Calvin Coolidge
The appointment came partly in response to the previous director's involvement in the Teapot Dome scandal.
Q 04In which year was the Bureau of Investigation renamed the Federal Bureau of Investigation?
1935
It was much more than a name change; the bureau was extensively restructured.
Q 05In which city was Hoover born on New Year's Day 1895 and did he live his entire life?
Washington, D.C.
He was born on Capitol Hill, on the site of a church that now has a stained-glass window dedicated to him.
Q 06How old was Hoover when his birth certificate was finally filed?
43
Two of his siblings had certificates, but his was not filed until 1938.
Q 07How did the young Hoover overcome a boyhood stutter?
He taught himself to talk very fast
He ended up speaking so quickly that stenographers struggled to keep up.
Q 08Where did the 18-year-old Hoover take his first job, as a messenger?
The Library of Congress
He said the job trained him in the value of collating material, the foundation of the Bureau's files.
Q 09Where did Hoover earn his law degrees in 1916 and 1917?
George Washington
He was a member of the Kappa Alpha Order there and became fascinated by the anti-vice crusader Anthony Comstock.
Q 10Which 1919-20 crackdown on radicals during the First Red Scare did the 24-year-old Hoover help carry out?
The Palmer Raids
He headed the new Radical Division and considered a future Supreme Court justice the most dangerous man in America.
Q 11What did Hoover do to female agents when he took over the Bureau in 1924?
Fired them all and banned any more
The bureau then had about 650 employees, including 441 special agents.
Q 12Which gangster was ambushed and killed by Bureau agents outside Chicago's Biograph Theater in July 1934?
John Dillinger
Agent Melvin Purvis got the tip; Hoover later allegedly forced him out of the Bureau out of jealousy.
Q 13What was the Wisconsin lodge where a botched 1934 raid on Dillinger's gang killed an agent and a bystander?
Little Bohemia
Q 21What was the name of the covert 'dirty tricks' programme Hoover formalised in 1956?
COINTELPRO
Its methods included burglaries, illegal wiretaps, forged documents and planted rumours; Charlie Chaplin was among its targets.
Q 22How was Hoover's covert dirty-tricks programme exposed in 1971?
Activists burgled an FBI office in Media, Pennsylvania
The eight burglars mailed the documents to newspapers; the Church Committee later declared the programme unconstitutional.
Q 23Which senator chaired the 1975 committee that declared Hoover's dirty-tricks programme illegal?
Frank Church
All the gangsters escaped, and Hoover realised his job was on the line.
Q 14Which Canadian forensic scientist's lab did Hoover visit in 1929 and 1932 while planning the FBI's?
Wilfrid Derome
The Bureau's laboratory was established in 1932.
Q 15What did Hoover persistently deny existed during the 1930s?
Organised crime
He feared such cases would take too many man-hours and expose underpaid agents to corruption by rich mobsters.
Q 16Which Attorney General forced Hoover into a reluctant campaign against the Mafia?
Robert F. Kennedy
With the president's brother running Justice, Hoover could not go over his head to the White House as he had before.
Q 17Which two mobsters allegedly held compromising photos of Hoover with his deputy?
Meyer Lansky and Frank Costello
The theory is offered as one explanation for his refusal to pursue the Mafia.
Q 18How were the two teams of Nazi saboteurs landed by U-boat in Florida and on Long Island caught?
One of the agents turned himself in to the FBI
He was charged and convicted anyway, in what became known as the Quirin affair.
Q 19Which president gave Hoover 'qualified permission' to wiretap suspected subversives?
Franklin D. Roosevelt
Attorney General Robert Jackson found the whole business distasteful and left the decisions to Hoover.
Q 20How many Americans did Hoover propose detaining in 1950 under a plan to suspend habeas corpus?
12,000
He submitted the plan to Truman at the outbreak of the Korean War; Truman did not act on it.
The Idaho Democrat's committee studied government intelligence operations broadly.
Q 24To which civil rights leader did Hoover's FBI send an anonymous 1964 letter he read as urging suicide?
Martin Luther King Jr.
It arrived shortly before he accepted the Nobel Peace Prize; Hoover had told JFK he was arranging a sex party during the March on Washington.
Q 25Which Mound Bayou civil rights leader did Hoover attack in a 1956 open letter over the Emmett Till case?
T. R. M. Howard
Howard had accused the Bureau of failing to investigate racially motivated murders properly; Hoover called his statements irresponsible.
Q 26Which president waived the mandatory retirement age of 70 in 1964 so Hoover could stay on indefinitely?
Lyndon B. Johnson
It came days before Hoover testified to the Warren Commission, whose creation he had helped suggest.
Q 27Which president was recorded in 1971 saying he would not fire Hoover because he feared his reprisals?
Richard Nixon
Truman and Kennedy had also considered dismissing him and judged the political cost too high.
Q 28How did Hoover die on 2 May 1972?
A heart attack at home
He was still director at 77; Nixon named L. Patrick Gray acting director the next day.
Q 29What honour did Hoover's body receive after his death, reportedly a first for a civil servant?
Lying in state in the Capitol
Chief Justice Warren Burger eulogised him there, and Nixon spoke at the funeral.
Q 30Where is Hoover buried, next to his parents and a sister who died in infancy?
Congressional Cemetery
His long-time deputy, who inherited his estate, is buried a few yards away.