Spotlighting the World Factbook as We Bid a Fond Farewell

Posted by mxfh 2 days ago

Spotlighting the World Factbook as We Bid a Fond Farewell(www.cia.gov)

184 points | 149 commentspage 2

itsrobreally 2 days ago|

This isn't ideal but the book is still in print:

https://www.amazon.com/CIA-World-Factbook-2025-2026/dp/15107...

I couldn't find a PDF or archive of the site online (other than the obvious archive.org) but I didn't look very hard.

toomuchtodo 2 days ago||

Thanks, picked up copies for the Internet Archive's OpenLibrary and to have a copy scanned for a public PDF.

saguntum 2 days ago||

Thanks. Is this one officially not getting released?

https://www.amazon.com/dp/151078604X/

I was thinking it would be nice to have a final print edition for the book collection, Amazon seems to be under the impression that this newer version is coming out in April.

toomuchtodo 2 days ago||

Potentially related:

https://www.wyden.senate.gov/imo/media/doc/wyden_letter_to_d...

LowLevelKernel 13 hours ago||

Does this mean the CIA is also going to pull all the archives too?

LowLevelKernel 1 day ago||

Does your local library still have any? I checked in a couple of libraries in CA and NV, and, I did find old ones

shmeeed 1 day ago|

Even the Library of Congress seems to have only the 1992 and 1993 editions (or maybe I'm just too dumb to search). Unfathomable.

aaron695 1 day ago||

[dead]

FeistySkink 2 days ago||

Huh. I had a native Android app way back when on the Play Store, that presented the Factbook in the mobile-friendly manner. Was quite popular in Africa of all places. But ultimately had to first delist it and then close the account altogether, once Google started requiring more and more unnecessary SDK updates, and ultimately identity verification. What a trip down the memory lane.

throwawayq3423 2 days ago||

At least they let the people behind it give a farewell message.

Most cuts to government are abrupt and unceremonious.

simonklitj 2 days ago||

Ah, was just finishing a geography quiz game with this as one of the fact sources. Oh well!

themafia 2 days ago||

I don't know that the Schlesinger memo was real but I think it's conclusions were perfect. The CIA needs to be split into two divisions. The research division and the operations division.

HWR_14 1 day ago||

Isn't it split into a research/analysis and an operations division already?

callmeal 2 days ago||

They should all just go home. They already won. Remember this quote?

"We'll know our disinformation program is complete when everything the American public believes is false." - William J. Casey, CIA Director (1981)

throwawayq3423 2 days ago|||

> This quote, often phrased as "We'll know our disinformation program is complete when everything the American public believes is false," is widely attributed to William J. Casey, who served as the Director of Central Intelligence (CIA) under President Ronald Reagan from 1981 to 1987.

> While frequently cited in literature and discussions about propaganda and media manipulation, the quote's authenticity is highly disputed and unverified.

Are you trying to be ironic?

stopbulying 1 day ago|||

The Power of Nightmares | Part 1: Baby It's Cold Outside | Adam Curtis F... https://youtube.com/watch?v=jxBbw13Y3Gc?t=32m54s :

> I don't believe anything in Team B was really true

> [...]

> Casey was convinced that there was a single, organized network of evil in the world, [...] He found the proof he was looking for in a book called The Terror Network

The Power of Nightmares | Part 2 : The Phantom Victory | Adam Curtis Ful... https://youtube.com/watch?v=KolgBqJ95ug?t=6m16s re: Casey, Reagan, Bush, Wolfowitz and why we've spent trillions saving the world from such dastardly evil since Carter's record-setting low EJK term (which was affected by oil price shock)

The Power of Nightmares: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Power_of_Nightmares

laughing_man 1 day ago|||

Somebody like Casey might think that, but I seriously doubt he'd ever actually say it, except as a joke.

shevy-java 2 days ago||||

Well - the easier take-away is that the general public can not trust any of those top organisations. I think when a citizen can not trust the government anymore (in any country, at the least in a democracy), this is worrying. It's then more like the novel 1984 - while that referred primarily to the Soviet Union (Big Brother referred to Stalin for the most part), one could also find so many correlations to a "strong man"-led democracy too.

csours 2 days ago|||

There Is No Disinformation Department.

shevy-java 2 days ago|||

Everyone should read 1984! It is such a time-less classic.

cyberge99 2 days ago|||

I see what you did there.

socalgal2 22 hours ago|

I'm going to take the downvotes but at what point should something like this be taken down? Some of you might say "never" but come on, the thing was started in 1962. If you wanted info on anything back then you had to go to the library and cross your fingers they had a book for whatever you wanted to know.

That world is long gone. Today we have Wikipedia, Our World in Data, and every government in the world has web pages from every agency.

I loved the World Factbook. I can also see that it's out lived its purpose.

handstitched 22 hours ago|

Look at the wikipedia page for any given country, and I guarantee you that it cites the CIA World Factbook at least once (and probably several times [1] ). Saying "we don't need the world factbook because we have Wikipedia" is completely ridiculous.

Wikipedia is an encyclopaedia, meaning it's not a primary source of facts but rather an aggregate of information published elsewhere.

[1] - some examples: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Australia - cites the factbook 4 times; https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uzbekistan - cites it twice

socalgal2 15 hours ago||

irrelevant. thy cite the CIA fact book because it expect, not because its the only source. they’ll just start citing something else like the country’s official stats, or the UN, or something else

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