ar is an accounting
period of 12 months from 1 January to 31 December. The fiscal year is
an accounting period of 12 months other than 1 January to 31 December.

Note: Information for the US and US dependencies was compiled from
material in the public domain and does not represent Intelligence
Community estimates.

This page was last updated on 18 December 2008

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CIA - The World Factbook -- History

A Brief History of Basic Intelligence and The World Factbook

The Intelligence Cycle is the process by which information is acquired,
converted into intelligence, and made available to policymakers.
Information is raw data from any source, data that may be fragmentary,
contradictory, unreliable, ambiguous, deceptive, or wrong. Intelligence
is information that has been collected, integrated, evaluated,
analyzed, and interpreted. Finished intelligence is the final product
of the Intelligence Cycle ready to be delivered to the policymaker.

The three types of finished intelligence are: basic, current, and
estimative. Basic intelligence provides the fundamental and factual
reference material on a country or issue. Current intelligence reports
on new developments. Estimative intelligence judges probable outcomes.
The three are mutually supportive: basic intelligence is the foundation
on which the other two are constructed; current intelligence
continually updates the inventory of knowledge; and estimative
intelligence revises overall interpretations of country and issue
prospects for guidance of basic and current intelligence. The World
Factbook , The President's Daily Brief , and the National Intelligence
Estimates are examples of the three types of finished intelligence.

The United States has carried on foreign intelligence activities since
the days of George Washington but only since World War II have they
been coordinated on a government-wide basis. Three programs have
highlighted the development of coordinated basic intelligence since
that time: (1 ) the Joint Army Navy Intelligence Studies (JANIS), (2 )
the National Intelligence Survey ( NIS ), and (3) The World Factbook .

During World War II, intelligence consumers realized that the
production of basic intelligence by different components of the US
Government resulted in a great duplication of effort and conflicting
information. The Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941 brought h