They had a most excellent editorial voice, as demonstrated by this "what's new" entry from December 10th 2020 about the height of Mount Everest https://simonw.github.io/cia-world-factbook-2020/docs/whatsnew.html

The CIA just stopped publishing their World Factbook and took every page, including the archived copies of previous versions!

This sucks. It was public domain, so I recovered the 2020 edition (the last one published as a zip file) and shared it to GitHub https://simonwillison.net/2026/Feb/5/the-world-factbook/

My laptop got its photo in the NYT!

(There's a photo of me later on in the story too) https://www.nytimes.com/2026/02/02/technology/moltbook-ai-social-media.html?unlocked_article_code=1.JFA.kBCd.hUw-s4vvfswK&smid=url-share