US CIA World Leaders

An index of most national-level cabinet members in world governments that is publicly maintained by the CIA.

From the CIA web site:

The CIA publishes and updates the online directory of World Leaders and Cabinet Members of Foreign Governments weekly. The directory is intended to be used primarily as a reference aid and includes as many governments of the world as is considered practical, some of them not officially recognized by the United States. Regimes with which the United States has no diplomatic exchanges are indicated by the initials NDE. Governments are listed according to the most commonly used version of each country’s name. The spelling of the personal names in this directory follows transliteration systems generally agreed upon by US Government agencies, except in the cases in which officials have stated a preference for alternate spellings of their names.

NOTE: Although the head of the central bank is listed for each country, in most cases he or she is not a Cabinet member. Ambassadors to the United States and Permanent Representatives to the UN, New York, have also been included.

Data overview

Entities:
Total16,878
Searchable11,035
Targets5,372
Entity types:
Positions5,663
People5,372
Countries:
199 countries · Show overview...
Publisher:Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) · United States
Collections:in OpenSanctions Default · Politically Exposed Persons Datasets
Information:www.cia.gov
Source data:www.cia.gov · JSON
Tags:list.pep
Coverage:added · frequency: daily
Last processed:2025-10-30 21:57:02 · v. 20251030215702-ctv
Last change:

Bulk download

Downloads contain the full set of entities contained in this dataset. You can fetch a simplified tabular form, or detailed, structured data in JSON format. Updated files will be provided once a day at the same location.

File nameExport typeSize
entities.ftm.jsonFollowTheMoney entities7.6 MB
names.txtTarget names text file239.16 KB
senzing.jsonSenzing entity format7.04 MB
targets.nested.jsonTargets as nested JSON7.58 MB
targets.simple.csvTargets as simplified CSV931.97 KB

Help: Using the data · model reference · delta updates · support · change log · licensing

Using the API

You can query the data in this dataset via the application programming interface (API) endpoints below. Please read the introduction for documentation and terms of service.

Use the Reconciliation API in OpenRefine:
For full-text search, use the /search endpoint:
For entity matching, use the /match endpoint:

Recent additions

The following targeted entities have been added to this data source most recently:

AddedNameTypeCountries
Simon WATTSPersonNew Zealand
Delvin O’Neale THOMAPersonNauru
Lara Erab DANIELPersonNauru
KANG Kyung-whaPersonSouth Korea
Andrius PalionisPersonLithuania
Edvinas GriksasPersonLithuania
Juras TaminskasPersonLithuania
Jurate ZailskienePersonLithuania
Kastytis ZuromskasPersonLithuania
Rita TamasunienePersonLithuania
Mark PATTERSONPersonNew Zealand
Scott SIMPSONPersonNew Zealand
Bjornar SKJAERANPersonNorway
Kjersti STENSENGPersonNorway
Arnold AmetPersonPapua New Guinea
Code on GitHub