El Chapo Trial: "What is this--- the OJ Trial?"--asked a FBI agent on the witness stand

Chivis Martinez Borderland Beat

Additional cross-examination of Vicente Zambada today, followed by law enforcement witnesses and another cooperator.

Monday was a low-key day in the courthouse.  It began with the defense continuing its cross examination of Vincente Zambada.  Followed by a FBI agent witness and another cooperative witness.

VZN

In the final leg of the cross, the focus was about that phone call VZN alluded to, between his father and himself, while he was in custody and after he began cooperating.

His claim was the attorneys arranged the call. Zambada says they chatted, mostly small talk, then he made a request for “information” on behalf of the DEA.

Chapo's defense suggested that the arranged phone call between Zambada and his father, gave way to the ensuing capture of Chapo.

Subsequent to his agreement to cooperate with the U.S., Zambada was allowed to telephone his father and send texts to him.

Zambada rejected that idea, saying Chapo knew he was cooperating.  He knew I was coming to testify, my compadre Chapo is not my enemy."

Chapo's lawyer responds: "You're testifying against him, you are his enemy."

Rounding out the cross exam, the defense asked about a long list of Mayo’s associates and operators who are dead or imprisoned.

The implied question is how, Mayo is free, never even arrested, but everyone around him, including, Chapo, were not so lucky, suggesting El Mayo set all of those people up for a fall.

FBI Agent Jose Moreno

Moreno a former FBI agent in Mexico. He testified about the near capture of Chapo in He testified about a March,  2012 raid at a luxury resort in Cabo San Lucas where Chapo was there for a “clandestine meeting” with a prostitute.. Chapo narrowly escaped but left behind a trove of evidence.

The story from BB archives:

One of Guzmán’s men hired the prostitute for the billionaire drug lord. the prostitute was blindfolded and taken to a rented home in Los Cabos without being told who her client would be. And Cuitláhuac Salinas Martinez, told the paper that when El Chapo arrived the hooker couldn’t “perform the services she was hired for because she was menstruating.” El Chapo left the house with the intention of returning, and it was while he was away Mexican authorities raided the house.  

According to Univision, “Salinas Martinez suggested that had it not been for the postponed encounter, authorities might have finally arrested Guzmán.” This isn’t what Mexican security sources tell me. The operation, they say, was bungled from the start and the fault rests with the federal police.AP speculated in the original dispatch that El Chapo’s narrow escape raises the suspicion that he was alerted. He was, U.S. and Mexican security sources told me, but not by some corrupt official or paid off cop. The federal police alerted El Chapo inadvertently, to the fury of the Americans, by making two major mistakes.  

Mexican police chiefs bungled the opportunity handed them by the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration, who through cell phone monitoring by the National Security Agency provided the electronic intelligence that for the first time in years pinpointed El Chapo’s exact whereabouts — in this case Los Cabos." 

This was the first time that we knew exactly where Guzmán was,” says a senior Mexican security source. “All the other occasions when we have been close it was only after the fact that we realized we had come close to El Chapo,” he adds. “On those other occasions, we have raided a property but only knew in advance that there was a high-value Sinaloa cartel target but we didn’t know that it was El Chapo – we hoped it was, but weren’t sure. This time we knew it was him and this was our best chance in years to get him.” El Chapo is as careful as Osama bin Laden was in using cell phones, knowing full well that the U.S. has tremendous capability to pinpoint targets through voice recognition and honing in on particular phone numbers. Like other cartels, the Sinaloa Federation uses pre-paid cell phones and cartel members change their phones several times a day to evade the American eavesdroppers.  

On this occasion one of El Chapo’s lieutenants held on to a phone for too long and security sources tell me that Guzmán phoned him. As a result the NSA’s voice-recognition systems that had been eavesdropping on that mobile phone identified El Chapo’s voice and traced the phone the drug lord was using. “He called one of his lieutenants, whose phone was being monitored,” says a U.S. source. 

“That guy presumably was being lazy and keeping a cell phone for way too long.”“A number of things went wrong right from the being,” says a U.S. source. “First off, they were too obvious on the ground.”  

But the biggest blunder came when the Mexican police inadvertently called both the subordinate’s phone and the one El Chapo was using to get a final confirmation of their exact whereabouts just hours before the raid was scheduled to unfold. “This was enough to tip off El Chapo that something was amiss,” says the U.S. source. “He fled shortly before the operation was launched.”  

The botched operation ignited a firestorm of recriminations behind the scenes between the Americans and Mexicans with formal protests being lodged by U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder and his Obama Cabinet colleague, Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano, Mexican and U.S. sources say.“Those guys were shouting at each other,” says a Mexican source. U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration officials stationed at the U.S. embassy in Mexico City met shortly after the failed operation with President Calderón to complain.  

They expressed their frustration at the poor planning and questionable oversight that led to El Chapo’s flight before federal police could nab him at the mansion in the exclusive Punta Ballena district overlooking the Gulf of California. The failure to nab El Chapo has undermined the trust that was being built up between U.S. and Mexican law-enforcement and has seriously undermined capturing Guzmán in the near future, say the sources. “This near miss is just going to make him even more cautious,” says a DEA source. “It turns out that recently he has been less in Durango and Sinaloa, where we assumed he was mainly hiding, and has been moving in a triangle between Tijuana, Baja California and Mexicali. Now he will change everything.” ***end of extract

Personal items found in the Cabo San Lucas home:

Nike shoes size 9

32x30 Levi’s,

Polo shirts-size medium

Eternity men’s cologne

Chapo’s Things to Do list!

Entered into evidence were images of Chapo’s notebooks. Entries such as a reference to “3 tons of weed” purchasing of weapons, and payments to be made.

What is this the OJ trial?

During the testimony of the FBI agent, there was a back and forth between him and Chapo defense attorney Eduardo Balarezo.

Balarezo: Makes note to the FBI agent about shoes found at the Cabo house, that they were not in evidence, thereby Chapo is unable to try them on.

Balarezo: "The jury has no way of knowing. If they don't fit---"

FBI agent: "What is this the OJ trial?"

Balarezo asked the agent about the total lack of evidence of Chapo at the house in Cabo. No fingerprints, no hair samples, no DNA.

FBI agent responded: "Sir, I wasn't in charge of the scene." Says it was responsibility of Mexican police to collect evidence.

The agent says that Mexican authorities were two hours late, “forgot” to cover the back door.  The FBI found footprints leading out the back.

Edgar Iván Galvan is the next cooperative witness to testify

Edgar Ivan Galvan testimony on Monday, just an hour into cross before the court shut down for the day.

He was a Sinaloa cartel enforcer/operative in El Paso and Ciudad Juarez. His testimony covers the Chapo-Juarez Cartel conflict. He worked under the direction of Jose Antonio Torres Marrufo.

Galvan, currently serving 24 years, after pleading guilty to cocaine and weapons conspiracy charges. He grew up in Juarez.

Top image is Jaguar--bottom is his cache of weapons in Juarez

He testified that it was Jose Antonio Torres Marrufo “Jaguar” who recruited him to work with the Sinaloa Cartel,  and that Chapo appointed Jaguar as Jefe de plaza of Juarez.

Stating further that Chapo needed someone strong to protect the plaza and eliminate La Linea in effort to take over Juarez

Galvan told the jury that he supplied the Sinaloa cartel with weapons during that time, including a .50 caliber rifle. The guns were stored at safe houses in El Paso.

He said Jaguar once took him to a Juarez murder house. The setup he describes appears to be what is discovered in those places, tile floors, with at least one drain.

“In that house, no noise is heard, if someone were to scream. That is where Jaguar sent people to be killed."

The witness insists he was merely a messenger—that he never ordered anyone killed.

Galvan says there was peace talks but they fell apart when Jaguar became incensed at the Linea Leader.

This cooperative witness is low level, and who I am unfamiliar with.  Seems like a huge waste of time.  

Below indictment of Jaguar, Chapo, Mayo and others [El Paso]

The indictment details the cell structure of the Sinaloa Cartel in Chihuahua and names their top lieutenants and several of their alleged assassins.

El Jaguar coordinated cocaine and marijuana shipments through Juarez to the U.S., according to the indictment. In September 2009, he ordered a team to kidnap someone in Horizon City, Texas, who had lost a 670-pound load of marijuana to law enforcement in Sierra Blanca. The person was taken to Juarez, tortured and killed. His mutilated body was found later in Juarez.

In May 2010, Jaguar had a groom kidnapped from his wedding in Juarez along with his brother and uncle, according to the indictment. The three were tortured and killed. Police found their bodies days later in the bed of a pickup in Juarez. A fourth person was killed in the kidnapping.

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