The Factbook is gone

Or, go find your own facts

The CIA killed one of its most enduring open-source reports in February. It happened on the same day that Jeff Bezos axed a third of the newsroom of the Washington Post. ^[1] Maybe that’s called an irony.

The guillotine fell quietly on an annual publication called the “World Factbook.” Sounds like an old-fashioned encyclopedia? That’s exactly right, though it transitioned from print to the internet in 1997 a little more smoothly and successfully than the classic Britannica. The CIA’s own history of the publication (dated September 2020, you know pre-Trump 2) stated that “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.” ^[2]

Good-bye essential resource. I accidentally discovered that it had slipped beneath the waves when I went to check it for details on an African railway and couldn’t find the Factbook online, only a brief note on the CIA website bidding it a “fond farewell.” The closing message read, “though the World Factbook is gone…we hope you will stay curious about the world and find ways to explore it…in person or virtually.” Sounds suspiciously woke for these Trump times. ^[3]

No explanation for its closure was provided by the CIA, though its demise fits the CIA Director, smooth John Ratcliffe’s, efforts to make the spy agency more “mission focused.” Or, back to the clandestine stuff.

What on earth was the CIA doing producing a public reference tome, you might wonder? The history goes right back to the founding of modern US intelligence during World War Two, with the creation of the Office of Strategic Services (OSS). ^[4] The OSS, being new to the game, found that it was in need of something it called “basic intelligence.” In original form it was called JANIS “Joint Army Navy Intelligence Studies.” The first JANIS report was produced in April 1943 and the last in July 1947. Once the CIA was born, in October, 1947, it took over JANIS and renamed the product the National Intelligence Survey (NIS). Still serving as a compendium of facts about the world. It’s value was saluted in one of the premier early government studies of the role of intelligence for US statecraft (the Hoover Commission) which reported to Congress that “The National Intelligence Survey is an invaluable publication which provides the essential elements of basic intelligence on all areas of the world.”

The NIS became the Factbook in 1971, was first made public in 1975, renamed the World Factbook in 1981, and went online in 1997. “An essential part of the CIA’s legacy,” the CIA said. ^[5] And now it is just that—a legacy product. One former CIA official who worked on it was not sorry to see it gone. It was boring work and the compilation of data considered risky, if facts were gotten wrong. ^[6]

It’s easy to say—but there’s the internet. Which internet (browser)? which collection of facts?; whose facts;? hello are you AI-generated? CNN’s fact checking-team called the World Factbook “the gold standard for country statistics.” When they went looking for alternatives, they found sourcing traced back to, you guessed it, the factbook. ^[7]

OK, how about that African railway I was trying to get data on? Searched online. A multitude of sources turned up, including corporate information from the railway itself, an EU study, Wikipedia, of course, and the omnipresent AI summation. I even got a declassified CIA report of “The Transportation Network in Southern Africa” from1985. ^[8] But the basic facts? I’ll get back to you next week, or next year.

CIA World Factbook, RIP.

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^[1] CNN, “CIA terminates its World Factbook, overthrowing reference regime,” February 5, 2026, https://www.cnn.com/2026/02/05/us/cia-world-factbook-countries-cec

^[2] CIA, “History of the World Factbook,” September 30, 2020, https://www.cia.gov/stories/story/history-of-the-world-factbook/

^[3] https://www.cia.gov/stories/story/spotlighting-the-world-factbook-as-we-bid-a-fond-farewell/

^[4] The best history of the CIA World Factbook, comes from the CIA World Factbook, no surprise. CIA, “History of the World Factbook,” September 30, 2020, https://www.cia.gov/stories/story/history-of-the-world-factbook/

^[5] Ibid

^[6] New York Times, “CIA World Factbook ends publication after 6 decades,” February 5, 2026, https://www.nytimes.com/2026/02/05/us/world-factbook-cia.html

^[7] CNN, “CIA terminates its World Factbook, overthrowing reference regime,” February 5, 2026, https://www.cnn.com/2026/02/05/us/cia-world-factbook-countries-cec

^[8] CIA, “The Transportation Network in Southern Africa,” 1985/declassified 2011, https://www.cia.gov/readingroom/docs/CIA-RDP90T01298R000100040001-9.pdf