SHARPTON BLASTS GOVERNMENT, HBO OVER AIRING OF DRUG DEAL

NEW YORK - The Rev. AI Sharpton yesterday accused a cable TV network and
the U.S. government of conducting "a campaign of dirty tricks" to disrupt
his possible presidential bid by, releasing a 19-year-old FBI videotape of
him being approached about a cocaine deal.

"It will take more than a distorted, 19-yearold tape to stop my exploration
to run for the president of the United States," he told a news conference
in Harlem.

The tape, which was aired on HBO's Real Sports with Bryant Gumbel last
night, was recorded in a government probe into whether boxing promoter Don
King had ties to organized crime.

Mr. Sharpton said the taped conversation dated to 1983, when self-described
mobster Michael Franzese and an undercover FBI agent posing as a Latin
American businessman approached him to discuss promoting boxing matches and
musical events.

Mr. Sharpton, 47, said that during the course of the conversation the
undercover agent began discussing a cocaine deal. The tape shows Mr.
Sharpton being offered thousands of dollars to arrange the sale of cocaine.
"Every kilogram we bring in, $3,500 to you. How does that sound?" FBI agent
Victor Quintana asks; as Mr. Sharpton nods. "So we bring in 10, you'll make
$35,000."

"I hear you," Mr. Sharpton replies.

"But that's a drip in the bucket," Mr. Quintana continues. "Well, if {the
buyer}can - if he's gonna do it - he'll do it much more than that," says
Mr. Sharpton, sporting a cowboy hat and an unlit cigar in his. mouth.

HBO spokesman Ray Stallone said the report "speaks for itself."

"The guy had come to me, In the middle of conversation he started talking,
about how he could cut me in on a cocaine deal," Mr. Sharpton said. "I
didn't know what this guy was on about. I didn't know if he was armed. I
was scared, so I just nodded my head to' everything he said and then he left."

A message left with the FBI was not immediately returned late Monday.

Mr. Sharpton said he didn't hear anything more about the conversation until
months later, when federal law enforcement officials confronted him with
the tape.

A 1988 report in the now defunct New York Newsday, citing unnamed sources,
said that once confronted with the evidence Mr. Sharpton became an
informant for the government, at times wearing a wire tap, a charge he
called ludicrous.

"This was investigated oyer and over again," he said Monday. "They all
admitted nothing had happened and no charges were ever filed." He said he
is not worried about the tape. "It's a cheap smear campaign, but I think it
will end up generating sympathy for what I have been fighting for all these
years against government abuses in trying to bring down successful minority
businesspeople," he said.