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Some Activists Smelled a Rat
By Ron Howell
STAFF WRITER
July 24, 2002
Even before 1988, when Newsday broke the story of Rev. Al Sharpton's background as an FBI informant, some fellow activists say they knew to stay away from him.
One group said Sharpton tried in 1983 to get them to introduce him to Joanne Chesimard, the fugitive revolutionary known now as Assata Shakur. An ex-FBI agent five years later confirmed to Newsday what the activists had suspected: Sharpton was working with the agency to gain information on Shakur's whereabouts.
"I would equate it with setting up 10 traps a day trying to catch a fox," the former agent, who had been one of Sharpton's "handlers," told Newsday at the time, speaking of the minister's work on the Shakur case.
The wary activists who met with Sharpton in 1983, including photographer Kwame Brathwaite and others well-known in the African-American community, were apparently among the motley group of political organizers, gangsters and others to whom Sharpton cozied up from 1983 to 1985, sometimes wearing a wire or taping their conversations on a phone specially placed in his Brooklyn home.
The collaboration between Sharpton and the FBI began in 1983 after agents confronted the minister with information on a videotape, which shows him discussing a drug deal with undercover FBI agent Victor Quintana. Quintana was posing as a drug dealer, FBI sources have said.
The videotape was obtained by HBO's "Real Sports with Bryant Gumbel," which aired it last night.
Also in that segment, ex-mobster Michael Franzese talked about his ties to Sharpton and described their effort to engage boxing promoter Don King in a money-laundering scheme with Quintana. Neither he nor Sharpton knew at the time that Quintana was an FBI agent, said Franzese, who served time in jail and now speaks out against sports gambling.
Eager to avoid being charged with a crime, Sharpton agreed to supply federal agents with information on King, King's stepson Carl, Colombo crime family mobster Franzese, Genovese crime family members Joey and Danny Pagano, sports agent Norby Walters and radical activist Sonny Carson, Newsday reported in January 1988.
Sharpton told Newsday back then that he had also turned over information on alleged election irregularities involving black elected officials, although Sharpton later denied informing on any black activists or politicians.
Sharpton has also said he informed only on gangsters who were hurting the black community, either through drug sales or by scalping tickets to concerts of black artists. Always flamboyant and seemingly able to talk his way out of any situation, Sharpton entered the high life of musicians and boxing promoters decades ago through the man he called his godfather, soul singer James Brown, and through the boxing promoter King.
Newsday's story in January 1988, headlined "The Minister and the Feds," came as Sharpton was serving as an adviser to Tawana Brawley, the black teenager who alleged she was sexually attacked by a group of white law-enforcement officers in upstate Wappingers Falls. In that explosive and racially divisive case, Sharpton was becoming, along with attorneys Alton Maddox and C. Vernon Mason, a hero in the radical black activist community.
Although the Newsday revelations threatened momentarily to derail Sharpton as a credible leader, both Maddox and Mason stood behind him, alleging the disclosures were part of a white conspiracy like the dirty tricks campaigns of the FBI against the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. in the 1960s.
Maddox's license to practice law was eventually suspended in connection with the Brawley case, and he now raises money at rallies of followers in Harlem. Mason, disbarred for neglecting his clients, is now a Baptist minister.
"There probably was an expectation that we were calling a press conference to denounce him [Sharpton]," Mason said in an interview yesterday. "But nothing changed ... And now I would ask, what is the purpose of this [the HBO videotape] coming out in 2002?"
Some activists, particularly those radicals who felt Sharpton had been trying to help the feds find Shakur, continued for years to keep their distance from the reverend. Shakur, who was convicted in 1977 of murdering a New Jersey State trooper and who escaped from an upstate prison in 1979 with the help of armed men, is now living in Cuba.
Carson, for example, was among those hoping other radicals would turn against Sharpton. But months went by, and then years. Sharpton ran for U.S. Senate, galvanizing black communities in the city. He orchestrated mass acts of civil disobedience protesting the killing by white police officers of black immigrant Amadou Diallo. Now he says he is running for president of the United States.
Carson has joined those who do not want to be quoted as saying unkind things about the highly visible minister who worked with the feds.
"I'm going to sit back very, very carefully, watching what this is all about," Carson said yesterday.
By Ron Howell
STAFF WRITER
July 24, 2002
Even before 1988, when Newsday broke the story of Rev. Al Sharpton's background as an FBI informant, some fellow activists say they knew to stay away from him.
One group said Sharpton tried in 1983 to get them to introduce him to Joanne Chesimard, the fugitive revolutionary known now as Assata Shakur. An ex-FBI agent five years later confirmed to Newsday what the activists had suspected: Sharpton was working with the agency to gain information on Shakur's whereabouts.
"I would equate it with setting up 10 traps a day trying to catch a fox," the former agent, who had been one of Sharpton's "handlers," told Newsday at the time, speaking of the minister's work on the Shakur case.
The wary activists who met with Sharpton in 1983, including photographer Kwame Brathwaite and others well-known in the African-American community, were apparently among the motley group of political organizers, gangsters and others to whom Sharpton cozied up from 1983 to 1985, sometimes wearing a wire or taping their conversations on a phone specially placed in his Brooklyn home.
The collaboration between Sharpton and the FBI began in 1983 after agents confronted the minister with information on a videotape, which shows him discussing a drug deal with undercover FBI agent Victor Quintana. Quintana was posing as a drug dealer, FBI sources have said.
The videotape was obtained by HBO's "Real Sports with Bryant Gumbel," which aired it last night.
Also in that segment, ex-mobster Michael Franzese talked about his ties to Sharpton and described their effort to engage boxing promoter Don King in a money-laundering scheme with Quintana. Neither he nor Sharpton knew at the time that Quintana was an FBI agent, said Franzese, who served time in jail and now speaks out against sports gambling.
Eager to avoid being charged with a crime, Sharpton agreed to supply federal agents with information on King, King's stepson Carl, Colombo crime family mobster Franzese, Genovese crime family members Joey and Danny Pagano, sports agent Norby Walters and radical activist Sonny Carson, Newsday reported in January 1988.
Sharpton told Newsday back then that he had also turned over information on alleged election irregularities involving black elected officials, although Sharpton later denied informing on any black activists or politicians.
Sharpton has also said he informed only on gangsters who were hurting the black community, either through drug sales or by scalping tickets to concerts of black artists. Always flamboyant and seemingly able to talk his way out of any situation, Sharpton entered the high life of musicians and boxing promoters decades ago through the man he called his godfather, soul singer James Brown, and through the boxing promoter King.
Newsday's story in January 1988, headlined "The Minister and the Feds," came as Sharpton was serving as an adviser to Tawana Brawley, the black teenager who alleged she was sexually attacked by a group of white law-enforcement officers in upstate Wappingers Falls. In that explosive and racially divisive case, Sharpton was becoming, along with attorneys Alton Maddox and C. Vernon Mason, a hero in the radical black activist community.
Although the Newsday revelations threatened momentarily to derail Sharpton as a credible leader, both Maddox and Mason stood behind him, alleging the disclosures were part of a white conspiracy like the dirty tricks campaigns of the FBI against the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. in the 1960s.
Maddox's license to practice law was eventually suspended in connection with the Brawley case, and he now raises money at rallies of followers in Harlem. Mason, disbarred for neglecting his clients, is now a Baptist minister.
"There probably was an expectation that we were calling a press conference to denounce him [Sharpton]," Mason said in an interview yesterday. "But nothing changed ... And now I would ask, what is the purpose of this [the HBO videotape] coming out in 2002?"
Some activists, particularly those radicals who felt Sharpton had been trying to help the feds find Shakur, continued for years to keep their distance from the reverend. Shakur, who was convicted in 1977 of murdering a New Jersey State trooper and who escaped from an upstate prison in 1979 with the help of armed men, is now living in Cuba.
Carson, for example, was among those hoping other radicals would turn against Sharpton. But months went by, and then years. Sharpton ran for U.S. Senate, galvanizing black communities in the city. He orchestrated mass acts of civil disobedience protesting the killing by white police officers of black immigrant Amadou Diallo. Now he says he is running for president of the United States.
Carson has joined those who do not want to be quoted as saying unkind things about the highly visible minister who worked with the feds.
"I'm going to sit back very, very carefully, watching what this is all about," Carson said yesterday.
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