they don’t do any first-hand investigation of basic info that is clearly shared or copied from other USG agencies.
Specifically the World Factbook people probably don’t, but I’m sure that least some of the estimates will come from the CIA, because they’re going to be the ones who are going to be responsible for same.
But what I’m saying is that they aren’t going to be closing the analysis guys down, just the public publication of that information.
I will stand corrected in that apparently some of the photos were taken by their people. But things like economic data or demographic data come from the State Department. State used to put out all these policy documents and reports which were all original sources of USG data. I’m seeing Archive.org is overloaded to look at the Factbook sources page, but IIRC, they give a lot of credit to other sources.
Specifically the World Factbook people probably don’t, but I’m sure that least some of the estimates will come from the CIA, because they’re going to be the ones who are going to be responsible for same.
But what I’m saying is that they aren’t going to be closing the analysis guys down, just the public publication of that information.
I will stand corrected in that apparently some of the photos were taken by their people. But things like economic data or demographic data come from the State Department. State used to put out all these policy documents and reports which were all original sources of USG data. I’m seeing Archive.org is overloaded to look at the Factbook sources page, but IIRC, they give a lot of credit to other sources.