Thread by @alanfeuer

One of the govt's most important witnesses, Vicente Zambada Niebla, has started testifying at the Chapo trial. As the son of Chapo's partner, Mayo Zambada, Vicente was a top man in the Sinaloa cartel and something like its heir apparent.

His testimony started slowly. He's taking the jury through Chapo's basic narrative:
Joining forces w/Mayo in the late 80s. Fleeing Mexico in 93 after being blamed for the death of Cardinal Ocampo. Getting arrested, convicted & imprisoned in Mexico. Ultimately escaping in 2001.

Vicente had a few new details on that famous escape where Chapo hid in a laundry cart. Chapo once recalled how under the sheets & blankets he could hear the clicks of doors each time he passed thru a checkpoint & was counting until they reached the last one.

At one point, the laundry guy helping him flee let go of the cart and it started rolling away from him. Chapo feared it might tip over and he'd be discovered.

Vicente will be on the stand all day and we'll hear more soon...

Vicente, 43, is handsome, well-spoken, a 2nd-gen narco who grew up at his father's knee. Almost from the time he was a teen he was privy to the innermost councils of the Sinaloa cartel. If he wasn't personally taking part in discussions of war, peace & business he overheard them.

He described being in the room when one trafficker pitched his father on smuggling coke by train to Chicago and when Chapo asked permission to assassinate a rival, Rodolfo Carrillo Fuentes.

When Chapo was on the run form the law living in the mountains, the two would chat about Chapo's old exploits: say, how Chapo once tried to murder another rival, Ramon Arellano Felix, at a Puerto Vallarta night club.

In this way, Vicente is exactly what he seems to be: the boss's son--the guy who's always there & has access to the cartel's inner circles and its choicest gossip.
The govt appears to be using him to bolster and corroborate stories that other witnesses have already told.

That said he offered new things too including details on Chapo's brother, Arturo, or El Pollo (the Chicken.)
When Pollo was arrested & put in Altiplano prison Vicente hatched a plan to break him out. The plan was to fly a helo over the yard & drop a rope w/a "steel bubble" on it.

That way, Pollo could climb inside and avoid being shot as the helo whisked him away.
B4 they could Pollo out, however, he was murdered, Vicente said that among the killers were Chapo's rivals, Vicente Carrillo Fuentes and Benjamin Arellano Felix.

Chapo's conflict w/the Arellano Felixes reached back all the way to 1988 when, Vicente said, Ramon Arellano Felix shot & killed one of Chapo's friends, Armando Lopez, at a birthday party for Mayo Zambada.

Chapo's conflict w/the Carrillo Fuentes started around 2003 when Rodolfo Carrillo Fuentes was mistreating, even killing, some of Chapo's people in a town near Culiacan.

In both wars Vicente was on the peace negotiation teams, taking part in efforts to avoid more fighting. Both times he failed but it indicates how in the mix of things he was.
He was often his father's emissary, flying around Mexico in private jets bringing messages from Mayo.

Vicente's testimony is turning out to be encyclopedic, both sweeping & granular at the same time.
He seems to know everything & everyone: Chapo's suppliers, distributors, bodyguards, assassins, his brothers, nephews, cousins and sons.

He can speak fluently about ephedrine shipments in Belize, coke loads hidden in palettes of frozen meat, about transferring hundreds of thousands of dollars in illicit profits from an exchange house in LA to one in Culiacan.

He's got details on submarine shipments off the coast of Colombian and how Mexican families were hired to drive cars w/secret compartments across the border at Juarez, sometimes 3 or 4 times a day.

He personally took part in a meeting in the Sinaloa mountains w/cartel leaders, representatives of Pemex, the national oil company, and reps for "high level politicians" (who were never named.)
The proposed deal? Ship 100 TONS of coke in a tanker vessel owned by Pemex.

It's a lot. In fact, it's almost too much...

Vicente finally got to corruption. Two big items:
1) He said his father had General Altimo, a high ranking official in the Mexican Defense Dept, on a $50,000 monthly salary.
2. Mayo also paid a monthly stipend to a certain Colonel Adams, one of President Fox's personal guards.

Colonel Adams, nicknamed El Chiclet, was Mayo's personal spy, passing sensitive info to the trafficker. For instance, Vicente said, Adams told Mayo and Chapo the deployment of forces sent to capture Chapo after he escaped from prison in 2001.
More soon...

Oh, almost casually, Vicente noted that Mayo's *monthly* payoffs to the authorities totaled about $1 million. MONTHLY.