Eulogy for the CIA Factbook: The free standard for world facts is gone
“Stay curious,” the CIA advised in its “fond farewell” to the Factbook.
By Associated Press, 04/05/2026 10:20 AM EDT
If you attended school any time after the Nixon administration, then you likely beheld at some point the CIA World Factbook, a map and reference manual of Planet Earth and its inhabitants upon which nearly everyone could agree.
Maybe you read parts of it from a floppy disk or a CD-ROM for that social studies project due tomorrow. Or scanned its list of countries for Latvia, because that is the country you are representing next week in Model U.N. Even better, you wandered the earth in your imagination as you held the physical Factbook in your own hands, unfolding its maps and understanding, perhaps for the first time, that the thumbs-up gesture your friends flash each other is considered an obscene insult in parts of the Middle East, Europe and Argentina.
Who knew? The Factbook and its readers did, for more than six decades.
Its authors — some of the world’s best intelligence-gatherers, who contributed thousands of their own photos — kept the curated database updated and online for public use at no charge. The reasons stated were geopolitical and philosophical. But since we are talking about facts, it also is true that the Factbook went public in 1975 with lofty statements of purpose at a time when Congress was revealing abuses by U.S. intelligence agencies, including the CIA.
“We share these facts with the people of all nations in the belief that knowledge of the truth underpins the functioning of free societies,” the CIA itself explained in its pages.
The spy agency is not sharing them anymore.
On Feb. 4, the Trump administration abruptly shuttered 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 great wave of grief rose from Factbook fans. Many said they mourned an America that valued knowledge for its own sake. Some saw darker forces at work under a president whose administration has promoted — in times of war and peace — “alternative facts.”
“Stay curious,” the CIA advised in its “fond farewell” to the Factbook.
And, it might have added: Good luck figuring out what’s true from the wild and frequently inaccurate world of the internet and artificial intelligence.
Decades before Google became an everyday verb, there was the Factbook.
Continue/Read Original Article: Eulogy for the CIA Factbook: The free standard for world facts is gone – POLITICO
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