The 1998 CIA World Factbook

"The 1998 CIA World Factbook" by the United States Central Intelligence Agency is a reference publication that offers comprehensive country profiles and statistics compiled in the late 1990s. As a factual resource, the book covers a wide range of topics, including geography, demographics, government structure, economy, and other essential data for various nations around the world. The opening of the factbook provides instructions regarding its formatting and a rundown of its table of contents, listing countries in alphabetical order. It leads with a detailed profile of Afghanistan, presenting key information such as geographical location, climate, population statistics, government type, and economic data. Each section aims to give readers a foundational understanding of Afghanistan and sets the tone for the subsequent entries covering other nations. The content focuses on presenting factual data, demographics, and geopolitical considerations without narrative elements or personal anecdotes. (This is an automatically generated summary.)

The Central Intelligence Agency, known informally as the Agency, metonymously as Langley and historically as the Company, is a civilian foreign intelligence service of the federal government of the United States tasked with gathering, processing, and analyzing national security information from around the world, primarily through the use of human intelligence (HUMINT) and conducting covert action through its Directorate of Operations. The agency is headquartered in the George Bush Center for Intelligence in Langley, Virginia.