The truth about Al Sharpton, the press and CDS

Thanks to Bill Clinton and the Community Reinvestment Act which he championed, many African-Americans got small business loans and home loans that they otherwise would not have received. Al Sharpton wants you to forget about that. That's why he's excusing Harry Reid's inane "negro dialect" comment while pretending that Bill Clinton is the most odious racist since George Lincoln Rockwell.

Why is Al Sharpton saying these ridiculous things? It's his job. Let's review some history that has been swept under the rug.

In an earlier post, we discussed a book called Overworld, by Larry Kolb. Kolb is the son of a CIA officer who was tasked by Agency luminary Miles Copeland to charm his way into the entourage of none other than Muhammad Ali. (Ali's enormous popularity in the Islamic world made him a useful ally.)

Kolb wasn't the only one in that entourage with an agenda: Al Sharpton did everything he could to get close to Ali.

Reverend Al was just Reverend Al. Around so much of the time, and usually so quiet you barely even noticed when he was there and when he wasn't.

Then one afternoon I was in the Soup Burg on Madison Avenue at 73rd...reading the sports section of New York Newsday I'd found on my stool when I sat down. And when I finished with the sports and flipped the paper over tot he front page, there was a big black-and-white photograph of Reverend Al looking shifty and a huge headline: THE MINISTER AND THE FEDS.

Under that, I read: "For the last five years, the Rev. Al Sharpton, Jr., one of the city's most vocal and visible black activists, has been secretly supplying federal law enforcement agencies with information on boxing promoter Don King, reputed organized crime leaders and black leaders and elected officials, according to sources. And in a two-hour, wide-ranging interview with New York Newsday, Sharpton, 33, said he carried concealed microphones in briefcases and accompanied undercover federal agents wearing body recorders to meetings with various subjects of federal investigations. He also allowed the U.S. attorney's office for the Eastern District of New York to install a tapped telephone in his Brooklyn home."

Al Fuckin' Sharpton, I thought in surprise as I stared into his face. I should've known. Al Sharpton! Muhammad had always said the government had someone spying on him or, as he liked to put it, that there was a "nigger in the woodpile."

Not exactly the way I'd phrase it. But I do think this story belongs on the internet record somewhere, since Wikipedia's entry on Sharpton makes no mention of this Newsday interview.

So why was Al Sharpton spying on behalf of Uncle Sam? Simple: Federal agents compromised Sharpton during a cocaine bust in 1983.

The television show HBO's Real Sports with Bryant Gumbel showed a 1983 FBI videotape in which Al Sharpton is seen talking about laundering drug money with former mobster Michael Franzese, a Mafioso-turned-undercover-FBI informant posing as a cocaine dealer.

Sharpton got into this mess through his friendship with boxing promoter Don King, a longtime friend of his. Franzese, a former Colombo family captain, alleges that a South American drug dealer looking to launder money through boxing promotions approached him. According to Franzese, Sharpton was going to arrange a meeting between the dealer and King.

On the tape, Sharpton is clearly heard accepting an offer of $35,000 as his cut on the coke deal. He did not know that the South American drug lord offering this business proposition was actually FBI agent Victor Quintana.

During his presidential campaign, Sharpton told the public that the drug bust was no big deal because no indictments were issued. Of course no indictments were issued. That's why Sharpton went to work for Uncle: To avoid an indictment.

And that's also why you don't hear much about Al Sharpton and the FBI on the teevee. If Sharpton weren't working for Uncle, you know damned well you'd never see his face on the tube. Even the right-wingers never mention Sharpton's work as an informant -- and they almost never bring up the drug bust, because they can't say much about that incident without mentioning his subsequent career undercover.

(Incidentally, Sharpton and his enterprises also owe about $1.5 million in taxes and penalties. Remember that episode of The Simpsons in which Homer went undercover after being nabbed by the IRS?)

So keep Sharpton's past in mind when you see him get on TV and say inane things about Bill Clinton. Sharpton is just a talking doll. Someone else is pulling the string.

Looks to me that we are experiencing a gale-force blast of Clinton Derangement Syndrome in the media. That's to be expected. Obama is proving to be Dubya II -- and as his ratings tank, the powers behind Obama have no choice but to mount yet another anti-Clinton Hate rally. It takes one hell of a lot of propaganda to convince the public that the third-best president of the 20th century (after the two Roosevelts) was a failure.

In the post below, I directed you to Bob Somerby's work-in-progress "How He Got There," an online book about the 2000 campaign which brought George W. Bush to power. You should read Somerby's introductory material in close conjunction with this CDS-addled piece by Eric Alterman, a self-confessed "poker buddy" of Game Change author John Heilemann. (That's the hot new Obot propaganda book about the 2008 election.)

Alterman on Game Change:

Here's who comes off horribly: Bill Clinton, Mark Penn, John and Elizabeth Edwards, Reille Whatshername, Cindy McCain, Rudy G., Sarah Palin. Here's who comes off pretty bad: Hillary Clinton. Here's who comes off OK: John McCain, Patty Solis Doyle. Here's who comes off great: Barack Obama, Michelle Obama, David Axlerod, David Plouffe, Steve Schmidt, Rick Davis. Here's who gets a free pass: Everybody in the media, pretty much, but especially ABC News, CNN, and their lobotomized debate questioners.

Somerby on the 2000 campaign:

I began discussing this topic in real time, in March 1999, at my web site, The Daily Howler. At the time, I had no idea how remarkable the press corps' performance during Campaign 2000 would be.

On the other hand:

By that time, the press corps' peculiar relations with President Clinton had led to one important book–Gene Lyons' Fools for Scandal: How the Media Invented Whitewater (1996). Before Campaign 2000 was finished, Lyons would team with Joe Conason for a second book, The Hunting of the President (2000). Here too, Lyons and Conason discussed the press corps' decade-long, pseudoscandal-driven pursuit of Bill Clinton.

In March 1999, Clinton's vice president began his own run for the White House. With remarkable speed, the press corps' pursuit of President Clinton was seamlessly transferred to Candidate Gore. Given the narrow way Campaign 2000 was decided, the press corps' twenty-month war against Gore almost surely decided its outcome.

Get it? Get it?

The same press corps that told you to hate Clinton and Gore...
...also told you to love Bush and Obama!!!

Now re-read what I said about Al Sharpton. The bit about someone pulling the string.

(By the way, the graphic at the top comes from here.)