If you went to school any time after the Nixon administration, then you likely saw at some point the CIA World Factbook, a map and reference guide to Planet Earth and its inhabitants that almost everyone could agree on.
Maybe you’re reading parts of it from a floppy disk or CD-ROM for that social studies project due tomorrow. Or you scanned his list of countries for Latvia, because that is the country you are representing next week in Model UN. Even better, you wandered the world in your mind while holding the Factbook in your own hands, unfolding its maps and understanding, perhaps for the first time, that the thumbs-up gesture your friends are fighting for is considered a dirty insult in parts of the Middle East, Europe and Argentina.
Who knew? Factbook and its readers did just that, for more than six decades.
Its authors – some of the world’s best information collectors, who contributed thousands of their photos – kept the database regularly updated and online for free public use. The reasons cited were geographical and philosophical. But since we’re talking about facts, it’s also true that the Factbook was made public in 1975 with major statements of purpose at a time when Congress was exposing abuses by US intelligence agencies, including the CIA.
“We share these things with people of all nations in the belief that the knowledge of the truth is the foundation of the functioning of a free society,” the CIA itself explained in its pages.
The intelligence agency is no longer involved.
On February 4, the Trump administration abruptly shut down this widely accepted account of humanity and its flags, nations, customs, militaries and borders. The CIA framed the move as one of progress for an agency whose core mission has changed.
A wave of grief rose from the fans of Factbook. Many said they mourn the America that valued knowledge for him. Others saw dark forces at work under a president whose administration has promoted — in times of war and peace — “alternative realities.”
“Stay interested,” the CIA advised in the Factbook’s “farewell.”
And, it might have added: Good luck figuring out the truth from the wild and often inaccurate world of the internet and artificial intelligence.
Decades before Google became an everyday verb, there was Factbook.
Its origin story is based on the Japanese surprise attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941, a US intelligence failure that spurred a more coordinated approach to gathering and organizing information about America’s enemies. Joint Naval Intelligence Training was born, the nation’s first interdepartmental intelligence program. But by 1946, national security experts agreed that “the conduct of peace involves all countries, all human activities – not just the enemy and his war production,” in the words of one, George S. Pettee.
The task of collecting basic intelligence on other countries was given to the newly created CIA in 1947, according to the agency’s website.
The Cold War revealed a continuing need for a single source of basic intelligence – and an opportunity for what in 1971 became the declassified Factbook. It was released to the public four years later.
In addition to being important to students, it had a geographical influence. The factbook showed the intelligence capabilities of the United States on the former Soviet Union and other enemies. Being included in it can give legitimacy to the nation or opposition party. And it was ironic that the agency that created the need to know and maintain secrecy was sharing so much data — called “basic intelligence” — with the public.
The factbook can also serve as a boost to the CIA’s public image and distance itself from other intelligence agencies tainted by congressional investigations. In 1975, U.S. Sen. Frank Church, D-Idaho, convened a panel that held more than 100 public hearings, many televised, of the most significant oversight of the intelligence agencies since World War II.
In 1976, the Church Committee reported widespread abuse by the CIA, IRS, National Security Agency and FBI, including the disclosure of the CIA’s “Family Jewels.” It was an insider’s account of the CIA’s illegal activities, such as spying on American activists and an assassination plot against Cuba’s Fidel Castro.
Also in 1975, what would become the CIA World Factbook was released to the public, emerging as a reliable research tool often recommended in class projects. There was never proof that bad press led to the Factbook’s widespread release, but doing so around the same time suited the CIA’s need to rebrand itself.
In 1981, the CIA renamed the publication The World Factbook, and in 1997, it went online. The CIA has described it as representing “a major culmination of efforts from some of our country’s most analytical minds.”
The news of the end of the Factbook shocked more than just American students and researchers. It was picked up by the media abroad. The story spread on social media, with Reddit users referencing each other’s archived Factbooks and racing to establish and identify other sources of unbiased information that might suffice.
Isabel Altamirano, assistant professor of chemistry library at Auburn University in Alabama, said the information is still out there, but “it’s going to be harder to find.” University libraries, for example, provide similar resources to students, who gain access through their studies.
“It was very easy, because it was all in one place,” he said in an interview, noting that on February 4, when he saw the news, he rushed to delete the Factbook from the list of resources for his students in his business communication class.
In principle, one analyst said, a Factbook compiled by a government agency with hidden agendas and murky methods might not have been biased in the first place.
“Collectors are not, nor can they be expected to be neutral,” said Binoy Kampmark, professor of international, urban and social studies at the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology in Australia. Mourning his loss, he wrote in an email, “it will be misplaced.”
The Factbook, he added, is best preserved as a historical document. Its last publication on February 4 is already out of date, according to the archived version: Under Iran, the head of the country’s government is still listed as Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.
Khamenei was reportedly killed on March 1 in a US-Israeli attack. And the world changed again, this time without Factbook noticing.
