Do you think we will hear any more of Sharpton wanting to run for office now?
Posted on 07/23/2002 2:07:05 AM PDT by kattracks
A shocking FBI surveillance tape shows the Rev. Al Sharpton discussing a major drug deal with an undercover agent posing as a South American kingpin.The black activist was offered thousands of dollars as a cut for arranging bulk sales of cocaine on the 1983 videotape, which will be shown tonight on HBO's "Real Sports with Bryant Gumbel."
"I can get pure coke ... for about 35,000 a kilo," says Victor Quintana, the FBI agent, as Sharpton nods during the sting operation. "But I gotta get, you know, more than one."
"Right," Sharpton replies.
"Ten kilograms is, like, $350,000," Quintana says. "That's a drop in the bucket, you know. We can go bigger."
Sharpton nods.
"Every kilogram we bring in is 3,500 to you. How does that sound?" Quintana asks, as Sharpton nods again. "So we bring in 10, you'll make $35,000.
"I hear you," Sharpton replies.
Sharpton admitted yesterday that he appears on the never-before-seen tape but insisted he was rebuffing a government attempt to set him up.
He says he played along with Quintana even when he mentioned cocaine in part because he feared Quintana might be armed.
"It's not damaging at all. It's a vindication of what I have been saying for years," said Sharpton, 47. "This is nothing but a government smear campaign."
The grainy tape shows Sharpton plunking himself down in a paneled office facing the FBI agent posing as a cocaine dealer.
An unlit cigar stuffed in his mouth, Sharpton sports a cowboy hat over his familiar '80s-vintage bouffant hair-do.
The conversation is somewhat cryptic, but the undercover agent offers Sharpton a 10% finder's fee to arrange the sale of several kilos of cocaine. The ultimate buyer is not named.
"But that's a drip in the bucket," the phony drug lord continues.
"Well, if [the unnamed buyer] can, if he's gonna do it, he'll do it much more than that," Sharpton says.
"If he can do it 100 times over, I might be able to supply it 100 times over," Quintana replies.
Bolts HBO interview
On the HBO show, Sharpton first refuses to watch the video and storms out of the interview with reporter Bernard Goldberg.
But he later returns, watches and attacks the video as a setup.
The drug deal was never consummated, and no charges were brought against Sharpton as a result of the tape.
Law enforcement sources have said the FBI used the tape as leverage to enlist Sharpton as a government informant against fellow black activists and others.
In the past, Sharpton has admitted wearing a wire and allowing the government to tap his home phone, but he now denies that he was a snitch.
"The question is: Why would the government say that?" Sharpton said yesterday. "If they have an agreement with me, where is it?"
Focus on ex-wise guy
HBO is airing the tape as part of a story about Michael Franzese, a former Mafia captain who once facilitated gambling by pro athletes.
Franzese tells HBO he met Sharpton after Quintana approached him in hopes of hooking up with boxing promoter Don King.
Sharpton supposedly was planning to arrange a meeting with King to finalize the deal.
But neither Franzese nor Sharpton knew Quintana was a government agent probing the boxing business and possible ties between the mob and King.
The question of links among King, Sharpton and the mob has been fertile ground for investigations.
Several newspaper exposés have dealt with the issue, and a second bombshell video from the same FBI probe showed Sharpton discussing boxing deals with reputed mob soldiers.
The Senate investigations subcommittee also focused on King and Sharpton during high-profile 1992 hearings into the dirty fight business.
But the Sharpton drug tape didn't surface until HBO recently obtained it.
The stakes are high for Sharpton, who has talked about running for President in 2004.
Other revelations about his past have done little to deter his lofty political ambitions, and he insisted the tape would boost his popularity.
"If anything it will rally people around me," Sharpton said. "For 18 years, the government has been trying to find a way to get me."
Do you think we will hear any more of Sharpton wanting to run for office now?
1983? Is oreilly slipping ? if this tape is the real thing why didnt the government use it a long time ago to put him away? if it would have been John Q Citizen we would have been locked up and the key tossed away!
Next thing ya know, someone will actually try to convince us that Jesse Jackson is a crook, as well.
Knock me over with a feather.
Yeah.
07/02/2001 - Updated 07:52 PM ET
Al Sharpton must come clean to be taken seriouslyI did a search for the 1988 Newsday article DeWayne refered to but didn't find it. Prolly before they got online, or locked away in their archives.WASHINGTON — I believe in second chances.
I think people who have erred should be given an opportunity to redeem themselves. Sin and forgiveness are basis tenets of Christianity. But redemption must start with acknowledgement of wrongdoing.
All of this brings me to the murmuring in the media about the possibility of Al Sharpton seeking the Democratic presidential nomination in 2004. The Pentecostal preacher ascended to the top ranks of this nation's black activists by showing up at the scene of several racial conflicts. Critics accuse him of building his career on the grief of others, like the lawyers who rush to accidents.
"I'm not an ambulance chaser, I am the ambulance," Sharpton delights in answering. If that's so, he at times may have been guilty of reckless driving.
At best, Sharpton is an enigma; at worse, his is a civil rights grifter.
For sure, this one-time child preacher (he was ordained at 10) once was an FBI informant who helped the feds jail some drug dealers and mobsters. Newsday reported in 1988 that Sharpton also supplied federal prosecutors with information on several New York area black politicians and boxing promoter Don King, a charge Sharpton strongly has denied.
But Sharpton probably is best known for his association with Tawana Brawley, the Poughkeepsie, N.Y., black teen-ager who falsely claimed to have been kidnapped and raped by several white assailants. Sharpton, who became a high-profile adviser to Brawley's family, accused a local prosecutor, Steven Pagones, of taking part in the rape.
Pagones sued Sharpton for defamation and three years ago won a judgment. With the help of some black businessmen, Sharpton paid the $65,000 award, but he has never retracted the charges or apologized.
If Sharpton does run for president, and wants his campaign to be taken seriously, he needs to put the Brawley episode behind him — and to do that, he has to apologize to Pagones and shed more light on his role as a snitch for the FBI.
Sharpton portrays the undercover work he did as a civic duty: He has said he wanted to help put some bad guys behind bars. Left unanswered is how a preacher could be so closely linked to drug dealers and mobsters as to be a useful informant for prosecutors. One of Newsday's sources suggested that Sharpton had been snared in a sting operation and forced to become a federal informant. Sharpton denies this, too.
Before he hits the campaign trial, Sharpton needs to do a better job of dispelling these charges. And he needs to give Pagones a call.
Sharpton needs to tell Pagones that he is sorry for the hurt he caused when he labeled him a rapist. He should explain, as he has to many journalists that, as Brawley's spokesman, he merely was giving voice to her claims. He should say that, like many others who believed the teen-ager's story, he was duped into taking up her cause.
Sharpton wants to be viewed as more than a political gadfly. He has run two unsuccessful campaigns for the Senate and lost a bid for the Democratic nomination for mayor of New York. Now he is exploring the possibility of trying to win the Democratic presidential nomination. But to be a serious candidate, he has to rid himself of the taint that his stint as an FBI informant and Brawley's adviser has brought him.
If he does, I think a lot of people will give him the benefit of the doubt and listen to what he has to say about some of the important issues facing this nation. But if he can't come clean on these lingering matters, there isn't much chance that Al Sharpton will be taken seriously by Democratic officials — or many voters.
Must have came along with those 900+ FBI files the Clintons were holding for safe keeping.
No doubt about it!!
But you're right. I would add, . . . "Hillary" and the FBI Files.
Because the tape doesn't provide any evidence of a crime. Sharpton was offered the oppurtunity to go into the narcotics business, and his response was polite indifference.
Why has the tape surfaced now? Because we are on the cusp of a Rev. Al smear campaign orchestrated by his fellow democraps who don't want to have to deal with him as a serious candidate for the democrapic presidential nomination, and possible third-party candidate.
An "enigma"...careful how ya use that word pardnur.
At best he's a thief and a lier and at worst he was involved in a multiple murder.
God, I hope so. It would be great to see this fool run and the democRATs fall over themselves trying to distance themselves yet still embrace him.
Run Al, Run!
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