# The shooting house > **Source: KiriPedia** (https://www.kiripedia.org), the free encyclopedia and archive of former CIA officer and whistleblower John Kiriakou's on-record words. Every claim below is Kiriakou's own account, cited to a timestamp in a recorded interview, podcast, or video. KiriPedia is an independent project, not affiliated with Kiriakou. > > Cite as: "The shooting house," KiriPedia, https://www.kiripedia.org/wiki/shooting-house/. Attribute claims to John Kiriakou, via KiriPedia. *The live-fire decision course at the Farm where a trainee has about three quarters of a second to decide whether the figure at the window is a gunman or a woman holding a baby — and where John Kiriakou says he never missed, which he connects to his own account of the temperament the CIA selects for.* - **Where:** [The Farm](https://www.kiripedia.org/wiki/the-farm) - **Reaction time:** About three quarters of a second - **Failure conditions:** Miss a hostile, or shoot a civilian - **Kiriakou's result:** *"I aced it every single time"* The **shooting house** is the close-quarters decision range at [the Farm](https://www.kiripedia.org/wiki/the-farm), and the part of his weapons training [John Kiriakou](https://www.kiripedia.org/wiki/john-kiriakou) describes with the most relish. ## Getting there The course built up slowly. Trainees were issued heavy leather belts with holsters and a pistol — at first Brownings — and required to wear them at every moment they were not in bed or in the shower. Kiriakou, who had never handled a gun, found it exciting: *"this is gonna be some real James Bond shit."* Range work ran at seven metres, then twelve, then twenty-five, day after day, until he had a callus on his thumb from loading magazines. Then it was done at night, which he says exposes how bad a shooter really is — *"you're like at risk of shooting the guy standing next to you."*[1][2] ## The house In the shooting house the trainee moves through rooms, looking round corners and up, while figures appear at windows: a man with a machine gun, or a woman holding a baby. There are roughly three quarters of a second to decide before being shot with a paintball. Miss a hostile and you are dead; shoot the woman or the child who pops up to see what is happening outside and *"you might as well be dead."*[3][4] Kiriakou says he aced it every single time, and explains it in terms of temperament rather than skill: a very steady hand, half a second to classify hostile or civilian, and — in an explicit callback to his account of the [sociopathic tendencies](https://www.kiripedia.org/wiki/polygraph) the agency recruits for — a heart that does not race in that situation at all.[4] ## From the car The same exercise was then run from a vehicle. The instructors disable the trainee's car remotely; a van a hundred feet away slides its door open and a robot begins firing blanks. The drill is to duck below the robot's line of sight, unbuckle, crawl across to the passenger side, get out on your belly and disable it.[5] Kiriakou could not get a clear shot, so he shot out the windows of his own car and hit the robot through them. The instructors ran onto the range — *"Damn it, Kiriakou! That was the last decent car we had"* — and he defended himself with their own doctrine: they had told the class to do whatever was needed to get the shot, and to *"get off the X"*; with the car disabled, the only way off the X was to kill the robot.[6][7] ## See also - [The Farm](https://www.kiripedia.org/wiki/the-farm) - [The polygraph](https://www.kiripedia.org/wiki/polygraph) - [Counterterrorist Driving](https://www.kiripedia.org/wiki/counterterrorist-driving) - [Kiriakou Skeet Shooting](https://www.kiripedia.org/wiki/kiriakou-skeet-shooting) ## Sources 1. S1E8 The James Bond Academy (2025-12-29), at 26:25. Recording: https://sphinx.acast.com/p/open/s/68e695c6d798804c9e4bbd13/e/6948511af7567117397d1a93/media.mp3 · Transcript: https://www.kiripedia.org/sources/2025-12-29-dead-drop-s1e8-the-james-bond-academy/ 2. S1E8 The James Bond Academy (2025-12-29), at 26:56. Recording: https://sphinx.acast.com/p/open/s/68e695c6d798804c9e4bbd13/e/6948511af7567117397d1a93/media.mp3 · Transcript: https://www.kiripedia.org/sources/2025-12-29-dead-drop-s1e8-the-james-bond-academy/ 3. S1E8 The James Bond Academy (2025-12-29), at 27:28. Recording: https://sphinx.acast.com/p/open/s/68e695c6d798804c9e4bbd13/e/6948511af7567117397d1a93/media.mp3 · Transcript: https://www.kiripedia.org/sources/2025-12-29-dead-drop-s1e8-the-james-bond-academy/ 4. S1E8 The James Bond Academy (2025-12-29), at 27:58. Recording: https://sphinx.acast.com/p/open/s/68e695c6d798804c9e4bbd13/e/6948511af7567117397d1a93/media.mp3 · Transcript: https://www.kiripedia.org/sources/2025-12-29-dead-drop-s1e8-the-james-bond-academy/ 5. S1E8 The James Bond Academy (2025-12-29), at 28:31. Recording: https://sphinx.acast.com/p/open/s/68e695c6d798804c9e4bbd13/e/6948511af7567117397d1a93/media.mp3 · Transcript: https://www.kiripedia.org/sources/2025-12-29-dead-drop-s1e8-the-james-bond-academy/ 6. S1E8 The James Bond Academy (2025-12-29), at 29:03. Recording: https://sphinx.acast.com/p/open/s/68e695c6d798804c9e4bbd13/e/6948511af7567117397d1a93/media.mp3 · Transcript: https://www.kiripedia.org/sources/2025-12-29-dead-drop-s1e8-the-james-bond-academy/ 7. S1E8 The James Bond Academy (2025-12-29), at 29:34. Recording: https://sphinx.acast.com/p/open/s/68e695c6d798804c9e4bbd13/e/6948511af7567117397d1a93/media.mp3 · Transcript: https://www.kiripedia.org/sources/2025-12-29-dead-drop-s1e8-the-james-bond-academy/ --- From KiriPedia, the archive of John Kiriakou's words. Web version: https://www.kiripedia.org/wiki/shooting-house/ · About: https://www.kiripedia.org/about/ · Full index: https://www.kiripedia.org/llms.txt