Pierce writes: "The Stupid Café is always open to hosting group events in our luxurious banquet and ballroom facilities in that part of the complex known colloquially as 'Out Back By The Recycling Bins.' So, when a large group of people dressed in trenchcoats, dark glasses, false mustaches, and brandishing exploding seashells showed up, we were well able to accommodate their party."



School bus. (photo: Tom Williams/Getty Images)

Oh Good. The CIA Left Plastic Explosives on a School Bus Full of Kids.

By Charles Pierce, Esquire

They should put the dogs in charge.

he Stupid Café is always open to hosting group events in our luxurious banquet and ballroom facilities in that part of the complex known colloquially as "Out Back By The Recycling Bins." So, when a large group of people dressed in trenchcoats, dark glasses, false mustaches, and brandishing exploding seashells showed up, we were well able to accommodate their party.

The CIA left "explosive training material" under the hood of a Loudoun County school bus after a training exercise last week, a bus that was used to ferry elementary and high school students to and from school on Monday and Tuesday with the material still sitting in the engine compartment, according to the CIA and Loudoun County officials. The Loudoun County Sheriff's Office and the CIA said in statements Thursday that the explosive material was left behind after a training exercise at Briar Woods High School during spring break. The CIA said it was a training scenario for explosives-detecting dogs.

They should have put the dogs in charge. They're pretty clearly the brains of the operation.

Loudoun schools spokesman Wayde Byard said the CIA indicated the nature of the material but asked the school system not to disclose it. Byard described it as a "putty-type" material designed for use on the battlefield and which requires a special detonator; such putty, or plastic, explosives—including the well-known C-4—are used in demolition and are considered stable. Byard said law enforcement agencies use school facilities on occasion to conduct realistic training exercises, including active-shooter drills. As part of last week's training exercise, CIA trainers placed explosive material into the engine compartment of a school bus on Thursday to test a dog's ability to sniff it out. They also placed the material in parts of the school. Byard said the dog successfully found the material in the engine compartment, but some of the material fell deeper inside the compartment and became wedged beneath the hoses.

The National Intelligence Program is budgeted at $53.5 billion this year. They can't buy their own fleet of school buses?

A thousand pieces, as John F. Kennedy once mused.