Remnants remained undetected for more than a week as the bus ferried public school students in Virginia but agency says material was ‘benign’ and ‘stable’

The CIA has admitted to accidentally leaving “explosive training material” under the hood of a Northern Virginia school bus for more than a week last month, remnants of a training exercise that remained undetected as the bus ferried public school students over a distance of 145 miles over the course of two days.

The agency inadvertently left an unknown quantity of the explosive under the hood of a Loudoun County Public Schools bus after using the vehicle in a training program last week, while the district’s students were on spring break. According to a statement released by the CIA, “explosive training material was inadvertently left by the CIA K-9 unit in one of the buses used in the exercise.”

The school district confirmed that the bus made eight runs on 28 and 29 March, carrying 26 public school students to three different schools for a total of 145miles of travel. The explosive material remained apparently undetected until the bus underwent routine maintenance performed by the school district on Wednesday.

“The CIA assured Loudoun officials the training material used in this exercise is stable and posed no danger to students on board the bus,” Loudoun County Public Schools said in a statement. “The exact nature of the training material used in this exercise is not being released at the request of the CIA so as not to compromise its training techniques.”

The material, characterized as “stable” by the CIA and “benign” by the school district, was characterized by a district spokesperson as a “putty-type” explosive requiring the use of a detonator, according to the Washington Post. A container holding the material was placed in the engine block of the bus as part of the training exercise, according to the CIA. At some point, however, a portion of the explosive material fell from the container into the engine compartment and was not recovered until it was discovered by a district mechanic.

In response to the incident, the CIA announced that the K-9 training program has been suspended until inventory control and procedural standards undergo review.

“CIA has taken immediate steps to strengthen inventory and control procedures in its K-9 program,” the agency said. “CIA will also conduct a thorough and independent review of CIA’s K-9 training program. CIA performed a full inventory this morning and accounted for all the explosive training material used in the K-9 training program.”