American Warlord by Johnny Dwyer Page B

them to waive the policy since in the past you’ve indicated that you’d like to speak.
    Chucky acknowledged the agent’s gesture.
    At the outset, Baechtle wanted to establish a rapport with him as he would any suspect or witness he was interviewing.
    I have to advise you that you are the subject of a federal arrest warrant, Baechtle said. It’s necessary that I advise you of your rights.
    What’s the warrant for? Chucky asked.
    Baechtle referred to the penal code, 18 U.S.C. 1542, making it a crime to make a “false statement in the application and use of passport.”
    “You have the right to remain silent, anything you say can …” Baechtle began. Chucky recited along with him, as any child raised on American television could.
    Do you understand these rights? Baechtle asked.
    I do, Chucky said, asking how long it would take.
    Outside the interrogation room, Inspector Jacques Smith pulled surgical gloves over his hands and opened up Chucky’s bag. 11 He removed the notebooks one by one and laid them across a table. He opened one notebook. Page upon page was filled with neat, almost feminine handwriting. A sample of the lines read:
    Just know when we step out killers upon the street, so more out any time of the night, boy watch out. ATU pan da scene. So cool out. ATU niggas on the scene. Body bag is all you see. So tell me what’s it going to be. 12
    Farther down the page, it was signed “Charles Taylor II.” He pulled out a book from Chucky’s bag
—Guerrilla Strategies
—a survey of insurrections around the world written by French theorist Gérard Chaliand. 13 The cover displayed Goya’s
And There’s Nothing to Be Done
, an etching depicting a blindfolded prisoner bound to a pole awaiting execution, the corpse of a comrade at his feet. Inscribed on the inside cover was “Return to G 2 section after reading instruction by GOC” signed “Brigadier Charles McArthur Taylor, II.”
    Inside the interrogation room, Baechtle began questioning Chucky. 14
    You were born Charles McArthur Emmanuel on February 2, 1977, at St. Margaret’s Hospital in Boston, Massachusetts, he said.
    Chucky nodded. Baechtle continued through other vital information: his Social Security number, other names he was known by as a student.
    Your mother’s name is Bernice Yolanda Emmanuel? Baechtle asked.
    Correct, he said.
    You indicated on the passport application you filled out in Trinidad that your father’s name is Steven Daniel Smith. Is that correct? Baechtle asked.
    I think it’s one of the names my pops used, Chucky responded.
    Did he go by any other names? Baechtle asked.
    Charles McArthur Taylor, he replied.
    The former president of Liberia? Baechtle asked.
    Chucky congratulated the agent. “You’re making a jump.”
    Chucky had done what little he could to conceal his connection to his father. But the measure he took, providing the false name “Steven Daniel Smith,” instead provided ICE with a valuable break: this seemingly minor obfuscation was a felony under federal law. Baechtle now had a charge to detain Chucky on: passport fraud. The crime carried a maximum sentence of twenty years in prison, though it was unlikely he would receive that much time. Chucky could be arraigned on that charge and, given his history fleeing criminal charges, held as a flight risk until trial. This sort of administrative charge had been used in recent years on a variety of cases against drug traffickers, fugitive murderers, and outlaw radicals, like a former member of the Symbionese Liberation Army. For Baechtle and his colleagues at ICE, it provided a good starting point—but they were after much more.
    As the evening dragged on, Chucky spoke with a sort of detached confidence. When the two men sat down, Baechtle had planned to work chronologically, covering the timeline of his suspect’s life, then circling back to events he wanted more details on. Chucky wasn’t self-conscious or evasive about the milestones of his past: his reunion