Counterterrorist driving was among the most memorable parts of John Kiriakou’s operations course at the Farm — a facility he describes as well over a thousand acres, with driving tracks, woodland roads and mock-up villages.[1]
The kidnapping
One night exercise had trainees driving a country road and coming upon a broken-down van. Is it just a van, or is it an IED, or a car bomb? Sitting idling, assessing, seeing nobody about — and then somebody opens the driver’s door, which the trainee has forgotten to lock, and puts a gun to his head: “congratulations, you’ve just been kidnapped.” Kiriakou says it is why, to this day, he puts his seatbelt on, locks the door and then starts the car, in that order.[2][3]
The PIT manoeuvre
Trainees learned the PIT manoeuvre — striking a fleeing car precisely at the rear wheel so that it spins out and stalls — and then, necessarily, how not to be on the receiving end of one. The counter is to keep a completely unreliable speed: 50, 30, 60, 30, 75, 25. The pursuer will hit you behind the rear wheel and in front of it, but you will not spin; it will feel like a minor fender bender.[3][4]
Roadblocks
The roadblock doctrine turns on where a car’s weight is. Since the mass is at the engine, two cars nose to nose across a road should be struck at the boot — the light end — which flips that car out of the way. If the cars form a V pointing at you and the rear of neither is reachable, the answer is to reverse at sixty miles an hour and spin the car around. Kiriakou notes what this did to the equipment: “I can’t tell you how many transmissions we completely ruined” — hence the fleet of beaters bought from junkyards or at auction for about $250.[5][6]
He took the training further afterwards, on an advanced counterterrorist driving course out west in the desert — driving over sand dunes, and breaking axles.[7]