WATCH: Al Sharpton Responds to FBI Mob Snitch Reports: ‘I’m a Cat, Not a Rat…But I Was Fat’

The Rev. Al Sharpton responding to the allegations today.

A defiant Rev. Al Sharpton today responded to media reports that he served as an FBI informant against mob bosses in the 1980s, confirming that he recorded conversations, but insisting the reports missed the mark.

Speaking at a hastily-called press conference at the National Action Network’s headquarters in Harlem, Mr. Sharpton took special issue with the “informant” characterization. The front pages of the New York Post and Daily News today labeled the reverend a “rat” and a “mob snitch.”

“Rats are usually people that were with other rats. I was not and am not a rat, because I wasn’t with the rats. I’m a cat,” said Mr. Sharpton. “I chase rats.”

Instead, Mr. Sharpton argued that cooperating with the police to help cut crime should be considered a good thing.

“I think it was very interesting that many of us are condemned for not fighting crime and now we’re condemned for fighting crime,” he said. “It is interesting to me, as we deal with the whole criminalization of many in our community, that the premise of a lot of this media is that I should have been with the mob rather than with the government.”

“I’ve done a lot of things in life. Some that if I could do again, I would do differently,” he added. “But in this situation, I did what was right.”

Mr. Sharpton further insisted that the story–reported by The Smoking Gun yesterday–was old news, much of it previously shared in his own 1996 book. The circumstances, he said, were simple: As he tried to increase the participation of black promoters in the music industry for artists like James Brown and Michael Jackson, he received death threats, which he took to police. He was then asked by law enforcement officers, he said, to record the men repeating the threats.

“We had conversations for the purposes of trying to solicit these guys to repeat the threats,” Mr. Sharpton said, describing the music industry at the time as “dominated” by mobster. “The conversations were recorded. And I would record them today if somebody threatened.”

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SOURCE: New York Observer
Jill Colvin