Your Tax Dollar At Work

You hear some stories about how certain agencies act and operate and you wonder if it's an old rerun of "Get Smart" or some other satire.  

The following story takes place at Briar Woods High School in Loudoun County, Virginia....not to be confused with James Woods Regional High School in Quahog, Rhode Island.  And the faculty and staff of the school did nothing wrong, so that's a relief. 

No, what happened was, the CIA held a "joint training exercise" using one of the school system's buses during spring break. They were training explosive-detecting dogs. So they put some plastic explosive right by the engine in that bus for the dogs under training to sniff out. The point was to hide the bomb really well so they wedged it really deep down there by the hoses and the power steering drive belt and I don't know what-all else.

Barney the Bomb Dog failed his final exam, I guess, because he failed to hit on the live explosive in the engine compartment.

And the people running the drill get a big F- too.

They failed to account for all the explosives, found and unfound, because they returned the bus, said a big "Thank you!" to the school, and went back to their usual busy schedule of spying on people and reading my emails.

And then school started up again, and the bus was used to transport 26 students attending Rock Ridge High School, Buffalo Trail Elementary School and Pinebrook Elementary School.

And then, because Loudoun County has a program of regular preventive maintenance for their school buses, an eagle-eyed mechanic doing those checks noticed that there seemed to be a bomb aboard the one bus...

And the school vehicle shop called the police and the CIA showed up as the local fire marshal removed the plastic material.  The CIA was fast to say that the material “did not pose a danger to passengers on the bus.” 

Try telling that to the parents of the kids on that bus, huh?

Now, to be precise, this explosive is said to be the "putty-type" material that you always see in TV shows and movies, but in real life, that stuff requires a special detonator.

Still.  Do you want to believe that the average 14-year-old male in this country does NOT have a detonator in his bureau drawer at home?  Come on! 

"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," said the Sheriff's Office, nervously.

In fact, they were so sure there was no danger to anyone that they just went ahead and checked out all the other buses just for the fun of it.

For their part, the CIA promised to take “immediate steps to strengthen inventory and control procedures in its K-9 program” and that they will investigate the canine training program.

In other words, blame it on the dog.