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

 

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

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how is it ive only found this now its gone !
wonder why its gone ?
its off to the wayback machine for me now !

 

That's unfortunate. In my past life as a marketing director I used that resource a number of times.

But as a taxpayer I can see how compiling that book probably cost a small fortune.

 

That's unfortunate. In my past life as a marketing director I used that resource a number of times.

But as a taxpayer I can see how compiling that book probably cost a small fortune.

I didn't use it very often, but I thoroughly enjoyed it when I did.

I imagine that compiling the information used in the book was happening whether they published it or not -- part of their mission is to compile that kind of information about every country and region so that they could inform and advise the users of their services. So they need something like that internally. Publishing the unclassified portions of it probably made a lot of sense in the days of printed resources and continuing to make it available, at least in electronic format, would seem to be a quite reasonable thing to do and could be done at marginal cost. But the CIA, like many federal agencies, has been given directives to focus on core missions and eliminate programs or parts of programs that don't advance them.

 

I didn't use it very often, but I thoroughly enjoyed it when I did.

I imagine that compiling the information used in the book was happening whether they published it or not -- part of their mission is to compile that kind of information about every country and region so that they could inform and advise the users of their services. So they need something like that internally. Publishing the unclassified portions of it probably made a lot of sense in the days of printed resources and continuing to make it available, at least in electronic format, would seem to be a quite reasonable thing to do and could be done at marginal cost. But the CIA, like many federal agencies, has been given directives to focus on core missions and eliminate programs or parts of programs that don't advance them.

We had a few copies in the general library and specific books on types of things, like boats variations off the coasts of countries in SEA when looking for bad guys to chase off.
Best days of my military experience, helping people.

 

I only consulted it a couple of times, but being myself a geography buff, I throughly enjoyed reading it.

 

Sad to hear, it was a good resource. I always wondered why it was put out by the CIA and not the State Department though as it was the type of information that was more useful to (and collected by) Embassies than anyone else... Yes, yes, I know about "special" attaches as I've known a few over the years.