One of the most unique and valuable government reference resources is The World Factbook, a thumbnail view of every nation and region on Earth. The Factbook provided a “detailed, by-the-numbers picture of foreign nations, their economies, militaries, resources and societies,” according to the Associated Press (AP).
Even if you never accessed the CIA website to read it, it’s likely that anything you read about a foreign country in a mainstream publication was sourced from the Factbook.
On Wednesday, the CIA wrote on the Factbook‘s website that, after 60 years, it was ceasing publication. No explanation was given, but with cuts to CIA personnel, it’s likely that CIA Director John Ratcliffe‘s vow to end programs that don’t advance the agency’s core missions proved to be the publication’s undoing.
The Factbook may have outlived its usefulness. I think reference sources like the Factbook are on their way out. All I have to do is ask Gemini or Claude a question, and the answer comes back with a link to the information. I find myself using the Factbook less and less.
“The World Factbook served the Intelligence Community and the general public as a longstanding, one-stop basic reference about countries and communities around the globe,” the agency said in announcing that the Factbook was going to “sunset.”
The Factbook grew out of a need for more comprehensive basic intelligence in the postwar world. During World War II, the Joint Army-Navy Intelligence Studies program (JANIS) was the country’s first interdepartmental basic intelligence program. It represented an authoritative and coordinated appraisal of strategic basic intelligence. JANIS published 34 studies between April 1943 and July 1947.
After the CIA was created in 1947, JANIS continued its work of supplying detailed reports on the world’s hot spots. JANIS was renamed the National Intelligence Survey (NIS), “but continued along the same tradition, providing policymakers and military leaders with up-to-date data, maps, and other reference materials,” according to the CIA fact sheet on the publication.
The original classified publication, titled The National Basic Intelligence Factbook, was first published in 1962. Even though it was classified, copies of The Factbook leaked to other parts of the government and proved popular across many agencies and departments. Eventually, the first unclassified version was issued in 1971. In the 1980s, it was renamed The World Factbook, and in 1997, the publication went digital.
Today, it continues to be an essential resource for the U.S. Government, institutions of higher learning, and countless private citizens who have come to rely on The World Factbook for timely and accurate reference materials about the world in which we live. It continues to evolve to meet the needs of our customers and represents a tremendous culmination of efforts from some of our country’s brightest analytic minds.
And so, before there was a Wikipedia to search on, before there was a Bing to consult, and most certainly before ‘Google’ became a verb, there was CIA’s World Factbook. It has been a resource used by presidents, by warfighters, and by the world’s greatest scholars. It is used in times of crisis, in times of uncertainly, in times of peace, and in times of war. It is an authoritative source of basic intelligence that has and will continue to be an essential part of CIA’s legacy.
I spent many hours perusing the Factbook just to read about other places, other people. It was almost addictive in the way that you could read about one place, follow the links, and be transported somewhere else.
I suspect that eventually, probably soon, the Factbook will re-emerge and be updated again. Too many people depend on it for it not to be updated.
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