CIA World Factbook
The CIA World Factbook was a standardized collection of country-level data.
Contents
Description
The factbook collected country-level information, such as demographics, from a wide variety of sources including but not limited to U.S. intelligence agencies.
It was designed for consumption and use by the U.S. government, and as such it reflected public policies. For example, certain governments were not officially recognized, so were not covered.
Geographies
The factbook defines the following world regions:
Africa
Europe
France **
Georgia *
Netherlands **
Russia *
Turkey *
* indicates that the state is double-counted as Europe and Asia
** indicates that the state is considered to consist of multiple countries
Asia
* indicates that the state is double-counted as Europe and Asia
North America
Oceania
South America
History
The factbook started as a classified document in 1962. It became public in 1975.
In 2026, Trump terminated the project.