J. Edgar Hoover Trivia Quiz Questions And Answers

Trivia quiz questions with answers about J. Edgar Hoover

J. Edgar Hoover Trivia Quiz Questions And Answers

Who was John Edgar Hoover?
A: John Edgar Hoover was the first Director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) of the United States and an American law enforcement administrator.

When was he was appointed as the director of the Bureau of Investigation, the FBI's predecessor?
A: In 1924 and was instrumental in founding the FBI in 1935.

How long did he remain director?
A: For over 37 years until his death in 1972 at the age of 77.

Hoover has been credited with building the FBI into a larger crime-fighting agency than it was at its inception and with instituting a number of modernizations to police technology, such as what?
A: A centralized fingerprint file and forensic laboratories.

Later in life and after his death, Hoover became a controversial figure as evidence of his what began to surface?
A: Secret abuses of power.

He was found to have exceeded the jurisdiction of the FBI, and to have used the FBI to do what?
A: To harass political dissenters and activists, to amass secret files on political leaders, and to collect evidence using illegal methods.

Hoover consequently amassed a great deal of power and was in a position to do what?
A: To intimidate and threaten others, even sitting presidents of the United States.

When was John Edgar Hoover born?
A: On New Year's Day 1895 in Washington, D.C.

Who was his mother?
A: Anna Marie who was of Swiss-German descent.

Who was his father?
A: Dickerson Naylor Hoover Sr., chief of the printing division of the U.S. Coast and Geodetic Survey, formerly a plate maker for the same organization.

Dickerson Hoover was of what ancestry?
A: English and German.

Hoover's maternal great-uncle, John Hitz, was a what?
A: A Swiss honorary consul general to the United States.

Among his family, he was the closest to whom?
A: His mother, who was their moral guide and disciplinarian.

Hoover did not have a birth certificate filed upon his birth, although it was what?
A: It was required in 1895 in Washington.

Two of his siblings did have certificates, but Hoover's was not filed until when?
A: 1938 when he was 43.

How long did Hoover live in Washington, D.C.?
A: His entire life.

Where did he attend high school?
A: Central High School, where he sang in the school choir, participated in the Reserve Officers' Training Corps program, and competed on the debate team.

During debates, he argued against what?
A: Women getting the right to vote and against the abolition of the death penalty.

The school newspaper applauded his what?
A: His "cool, relentless logic."

Hoover stuttered as a boy, which he overcame by doing what?
A: Teaching himself to talk quickly, a style that he carried through his adult career.

He eventually spoke with such ferocious speed that stenographers had what?
A: A hard time following him.

Hoover was 18 years old when he accepted his first job, an entry-level position as what?
A: A messenger in the orders department, at the Library of Congress.

The library was how far from his house?
A: A half mile.

Hoover obtained a Bachelor of Laws from where?
A: The George Washington University Law School in 1916, where he was a member of the Alpha Nu Chapter of the Kappa Alpha Order, and an LL.M. in 1917 from the same university.

While a law student, Hoover became interested in what?
A: The career of Anthony Comstock, the New York City U.S. Postal Inspector, who waged prolonged campaigns against fraud, vice, pornography, and birth control.

Immediately after getting his LL.M. degree, Hoover was hired by whom?
A: The Justice Department to work in the War Emergency Division.

He accepted the clerkship on July 27, 1917, when he was how old?
A: Just 22 years old.

The job paid $990 a year ($19,400 in 2019) and was exempt from what?
A: The draft.

In 1920, Edgar Hoover was initiated at D.C.'s Federal Lodge No. 1 in Washington D.C., becoming a what?
A: A Master Mason by age 25 and a 33rd Degree Inspector General Honorary in 1955.

He soon became the head of the Division's Alien Enemy Bureau, authorized by President Woodrow Wilson at the beginning of World War I to do what?
A: To arrest and jail allegedly disloyal foreigners without trial.

He received additional authority from what?
A: The 1917 Espionage Act.

Out of a list of 1,400 suspicious Germans living in the U.S., the Bureau arrested how many?
A: 98 and designated 1,172 as arrestable.

In August 1919, the 24-year-old Hoover became head of what?
A: The Bureau of Investigation's new General Intelligence Division, also known as the Radical Division because its goal was to monitor and disrupt the work of domestic radicals.

America's First Red Scare was beginning, and one of Hoover's first assignments was to do what?
A: To carry out the Palmer Raids.

Hoover and his chosen assistant, George Ruch, monitored a variety of U.S. radicals with the intent to do what?
A: To punish, arrest, or deport those whose politics they decided were dangerous.

In 1921, Hoover rose in the Bureau of Investigation to what position?
A: Deputy head and, in 1924, the Attorney General made him the acting director.

On May 10, 1924, President Calvin Coolidge appointed Hoover as the fifth Director of the Bureau of Investigation, partly in response to what?
A: Allegations that the prior director, William J. Burns, was involved in the Teapot Dome scandal.

When Hoover took over the Bureau of Investigation, it had approximately how many employees?
A: 650, including 441 Special Agents.

Who did Hoover fire?
A: All female agents and banned the future hiring of them.

He frequently fired Bureau agents, singling whom?
A: Those he thought "looked stupid like truck drivers," or whom he considered "pinheads."

He also relocated agents who had displeased him to what?
A: Career-ending assignments and locations.

Hoover often praised local law-enforcement officers around the country, and did what in the process?
A: Built up a national network of supporters and admirers.

One whom he often commended for particular effectiveness was who?
A: The conservative sheriff of Caddo Parish, Louisiana, J. Howell Flournoy.

In the early 1930s, criminal gangs used their superior firepower and fast getaway cars to elude whom?
A: Local law enforcement agencies and avoid arrest.

Many of these criminals frequently made newspaper headlines across the United States, particularly whom?
A: John Dillinger, who became famous for leaping over bank cages, and repeatedly escaping from jails and police traps.

The gangsters enjoyed a level of sympathy in the Midwest, as banks and bankers were widely seen as what?
A: Oppressors of common people during the Great Depression.

The robbers operated across state lines, and Hoover pressed to have their crimes recognized as federal offenses so that he and his men would have the authority to do what?
A: To pursue them and get the credit for capturing them.

In late July 1934, Special Agent Melvin Purvis, the Director of Operations in the Chicago office, received what?
A: A tip on Dillinger's whereabouts.

The tip paid off when Dillinger was what?
A: Located, ambushed, and killed by Bureau agents outside the Biograph Theater.

Hoover was credited with several highly publicized captures or shootings of outlaws and bank robbers, even though what?
A: He was not present at the events.

In 1939, the FBI became pre-eminent in the field of what?
A: Domestic intelligence, thanks in large part to changes made by Hoover, such as expanding and combining fingerprint files in the Identification Division, to compile the largest collection of fingerprints.