American Warlord

A True Story

By: Johnny Dwyer

Narrated by: Peter Jay Fernandez

A gripping work of reportage that, for the first time, tells the story of "Chucky" Taylor, a young American who lost his soul in Liberia, the country where his African father was a ruthless warlord and dictator.

Chucky Taylor was in many ways an average American kid: Growing up in Florida, he had friends, a high school sweetheart, and some brushes with the law. But then, in 1992, at age 15, he traveled to Liberia to meet his estranged father Charles Taylor - the warlord and future president of Liberia. Adrift in a strange, underdeveloped country, Chucky became the commander of the infamous Anti-Terrorist Unit, aka "Demon Forces".

Suddenly powerful amidst the lawlessness of his father's rule, any semblance of morality vanished: The savagery and pointlessness of his crimes shocked even his brutal father. Fleeing Liberia as his father's government fell, Chucky was caught sneaking into the United States and became the first American convicted of the war crime of torture. Now, Johnny Dwyer's deeply researched audiobook tells not just the riveting story of Chucky Taylor and his family, but also of Liberia, a nation which only recently has found reason to hope for the future.

©2015 Johnny Dwyer (P)2015 Recorded Books

More a historic review than a biography

This book is not what I expected. It is more a history of Liberia than a biography of Chucky Taylor. It is well written and informative.
The narration is exceptional. His voice matches the text, at times impartial and informative and at other times it's filled with the pathos and accents of the victims of the Taylors.

Adding This to the Little-Known-History genre of my library

Well told, well researched. Extremely violent in places, concerning torture, abuse, and human rights violation. I was born in the 90's and never had a clue this stuff was going on; I'm glad someone told this stpry

Difficult to hear tales of torture

Charles Taylor lost power within the corrupt and despotic Samuel Doe regime, and raised troops abroad based on tribal loyalties which he used to invade Liberia in 1989. Taylor, too, was corrupt and despotic. Taylor’s son Chucky Belfast (he took the name of the stepfather who raised him) was a juvenile delinquent in Florida who faced real prison time for attempted robbery and assault with a firearm. His mother felt she could not control him (and probably did not like him), and urged Charles Taylor to take up the parental mantel. Chucky was probably already a sociopath before he went to Liberia, but he took up torture and execution with gusto there. Taylor gave Chucky a "Demon Force," later called the Anti Terror Unit, to command. Probably Chucky’s mercurial mood swings were caused or exacerbated by drug use. It is difficult to hear of the grotesque punishments and tortures he ordered; I often had to skip skip ahead.
Chucky and his father flee separately from Liberia after losing power. Chucky wants to return to the U.S. and so seeks a U.S. passport in his birth name, falsely listing a father not Charles Taylor. ICE arrests him for passport fraud (the author, who is ignorant of the fugitive disentitlement doctrine, falsely asserts that the statute of limitations had run on the armed robbery charges from which Chucky fled) and then the FBI attempts to build a torture case against him. The trial portion of the book, which is what I was looking forward to, was underwhelming. The prosecution delayed until weeks before trial releasing the witness list (maybe arguing that the witnesses were in danger?), so the defense was off-footed; they had imagined that the witnesses would only be political and tribal rivals and had built their defense around that, but some of the witnesses were not. The defense also argued that the witnesses were not credible and wanted visas. Again, some did not. And their scars were a dramatic confirmation of their torture. The defense also argued that what happened in Liberia was essentially unknowable in the U.S., which seems weak.

A thug's life

You didn’t love this book... but did it have any redeeming qualities?

What sets this book apart from other bios of third world warlords is that its subject, Chucky Taylor, was born in the United States and spent his formative years there. Other than that, I didn’t find the narrative all that compelling. There is little about Taylor or his story to hold the listener’s interest – his banality, cruelty, and seeming lack of insight into the effect of his actions on those around him could be the story of any number of faceless tyrants that have been all too depressingly common in the history of the dark continent. I had expected a “rise and fall” story of an evil but perhaps compelling figure but there is little here to suggest Taylor did little more than stumble into power by birthright before fading away to irrelevance. In this case, truth is duller than fiction.