THE CIA ACCIDENTALLY left explosive material under a school bus in North Virginia for over a week.
The organisation released a statement, confirming the incident took place during “a routine training exercise with law enforcement officials in Loudoun County”.
On Wednesday, the CIA was notified that the explosive material was found when the bus was undergoing routine maintenance. The CIA said it “coordinated closely with local authorities and recovered the training material”.
Loudoun County officials said the bus transported primary and secondary students on 28 and 29 March. The CIA said explosives experts confirmed the training material “did not pose a danger to passengers on the bus”.
“To prevent such incidents from happening again, CIA has taken immediate steps to strengthen inventory and control procedures”, the statement continued, noting that “a thorough and independent review” of the training programme will also take place.
The Loudoun County Sheriff’s Office said representatives met with the CIA and this particular training programme has been suspended until “a thorough review of all procedures is completed”.
The office said the explosive material found was used “during a recent joint canine training led by the CIA at Briar Woods High School in Ashburn”.
As part of the training exercise last week, canine explosive detection training was conducted in areas inside and outside of the high school. During the outside portion of the training, the training material was hidden inside an engine compartment of the bus.
“At some point, a portion of the material from the container appears to have been dislodged from the container and fell into the engine compartment of the bus and was not recovered following the training.”
As a precaution, all buses that were used or were near the training exercise at Briar Woods High School were searched and nothing was found.
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