So I go to the CIA home page tonight. Don't ask. (Well, OK, if you must know, I wanted to find out who all the Directors had been.) And the first thing I see is this:

What's New at CIA.gov

• April 5, 2006 - Posted Press Release: The World Factbook 2006 online edition now available.

I click the Press Release link, and the next thing I see is: CIA World Factbook 2006 Now Available

I go there, naturally. And on that page I see an item that says: Purchasing Information.

I don't want to buy it -- hell, you can download it -- but let's just say I'm curious. I'm always curious about how large organizations manage their websites. And their minds. So I click through and I end up at the U.S. Government Bookstore.

There's a search form. Great, good thinking! I type in, simply, exactly like this but without the quotes: "cia factbook"

And here's the good part: the results are even ranked by relevancy! But wait... First, the 2006 edition doesn't appear to be listed at all. And how come they're not in any kind of order if they're supposedly ranked by "relevancy"? To what? To my complicated query "cia factbook"? And why is the next most relevant volume after 2006 (you'd think) -- World Factbook, 2005 -- ranked at #12? Do these people know what they're doing over there? And they're planning wars and shit? Man, I'm stating to get a real bad feeling about our Central Intelligence Agency.

Search yielded 31 results. Displaying matches 1 to 31
[ 1 ] World Factbook, 2000 (Relevance: 829)
[ 2 ] World Factbook, 1996 (Relevance: 757)
[ 3 ] World Factbook, 1998 (Relevance: 757)
[ 4 ] World Factbook, 1999 (Relevance: 757)
[ 5 ] World Factbook, 2002 (Relevance: 757)
[ 6 ] World Factbook, 2001 (Relevance: 677)
[ 7 ] CIA and the Vietnam Policymakers: Three Episodes, 1962-1968 (Relevance: 669)
[ 8 ] World Factbook, 2003 (Relevance: 648)
[ 9 ] World Factbook, 2004 (Relevance: 648)
[ 10 ] ...
[ 11 ] ...
[ 12 ] World Factbook, 2005 (Relevance: 580)