A Virginia school bus shuttled dozens of school kids over two days, all while carrying inert explosives the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) left under its hood. The Sheriff's Office has offered answers, which have raised a few more questions.
The incident occurred last week in Loudoun County after county officials and a CIA team participated in joint canine unit exercises.
The exercises took place ahead of spring break for the county's public school and the explosives were discovered on March 30, two days after classes had resumed. The bus, on March 28 and 29, carried kids to and from Rock Ridge High School and Pinebrook Elementary Buffalo Trail.
The CIA was then notified that a routine inspection of the bus had turned up explosive materials. The explosives were inert, or chemically inactive, so it didn't pose a threat to those who unwittingly rode on the bus with it, the CIA and Loundoun County officials point out.
"The training materials used in the exercises are incredibly stable and according to the CIA and Loudoun County explosive experts the students on the bus were not in any danger from the training material," says the sheriff's office. "As a precaution, all buses that were used or were near the training exercise at the Briar Woods High School were further searched and nothing was found."
It was later determined that the material left in the bus fell out of a container that had been planted in the engine area. The law enforcement agents apparently thought they'd removed the entire package, failing to realize that part of it had fallen deeper into the engine compartment.
"To prevent such incidents from happening again, CIA has taken immediate steps to strengthen inventory and control procedures in its K-9 program," the CIA says. "CIA will also conduct a thorough and independent review of CIA's K-9 training program."
It might be tempting to criticize the exercise's participants for not realizing that they'd only retrieved part of the training materials from the engine compartment. But that's what training is for: making mistakes and learning from them in order to be ready for the real thing.
