[arrowsmith]

The CIA World Factbook is a tertiary source.

[hulitu]

But treated by Wikipedia as _the_ primary source. /s

[red-iron-pine]

it is an official release put out by an organ of the US government responsible for creating intelligence.

presumably their facts are undergoing vetting and validation.

[thaumasiotes]

Yes, I was surprised by the overwhelming consensus here that the CIA, which is responsible for knowing what's true about other countries, doesn't do any validation of the claims they make about other countries.