REVEREND FAT RAT FLIPPED BY FBI AFTER ATTEMPT TO BUY KILOS OF COCAINE

Al ‘Fat Rat’ Sharpton most likely turned mob snitch to avoid indictment on cocaine trafficking charges

Al Sharpton’s stint as an FBI informant in the mid-1980s shows what a four-flushing phony the charlatan is. He apparently turned snitch after being caught on camera trying to buy kilos of cocaine from an undercover FBI agent. And if, as former NYPD detective Bo Dietl claims, everyone knew that 'Fat Rat' – what the cops called Sharpton - was an FBI snitch, then the mob had to know it too, in which case the information he was able to furnish the bureau would seem to have been dubious at best.

EX-NY COP BO DIETL: INFORMANT SHRPTON KNOWN AS ‘FAT RAT’
By Drew MacKenzie

Newsmax
April 9, 2014

Former NYPD detective Bo Dietl told Fox News on Tuesday the Rev. Al Sharpton was known as "the fat rat" — and that the MSNBC host had likely been turned into an FBI informer after he was filmed allegedly trying to buy cocaine.

Host Sean Hannity showed a video, first aired by HBO in 1983, of the civil rights activist apparently attempting to buy kilos of the drug from an undercover FBI agent.

Sharpton admitted that he had cooperated with an FBI investigation into New York’s Genovese crime family, but he denied being paid to snitch on the mob. Dietl, however, said it was well known that Sharpton was helping the FBI.

"There was a lot of involvement with the music industry at that time that Al was involved in," Dietl said. "People I knew from East Harlem, everyone on the streets at that time, knew he was an informant. We used to call him the fat rat."

Asked by Hannity what he thought of the video showing Sharpton’s alleged conversation involving a cocaine purchase, Dietl said, "The video stands for itself. He was talking about buying kilos of coke with an undercover [cop]. So who is he representing?"

Hannity then asked if Sharpton had been "flipped" by the FBI into turning informant because agents had probably threatened to indict him.

Dietl said, "The majority of the times when we develop informants is when you get them on a felony case, and then you flip them, and they become an informant. When he says he didn’t know he was an informant, that’s a lot of baloney. Al Sharpton knew what he was doing, he was cooperating with the FBI."

Dietl, who published his autobiography "One Tough Cop: The Bo Dietl Story" in 1998 and was portrayed by Stephen Baldwin in the film based on the book, said Sharpton continued working for the FBI into the 1990s.

On Monday, The Smoking Gun published documents relating to an FBI investigation into Genovese mobsters. And although the documents did not name the informants, the website said Sharpton was an informer, leading to a blaring headline in the New York Post calling him "Rev. Rat."

Sharpton denied he was an informer known to agents as "CI-7." But he admitted that he had cooperated with the FBI in the 1980s to help record suspected mobsters repeat threats made against him over his campaign to help black concert promoters.

"They were threatening to kill me," he said, adding that he recorded the conversations over a two-year period. "I was not and am not a rat, because I wasn't with the rats. I am a cat. I chase rats."