“Confidential Informant No. 7,” as his abbreviated code name meant, regularly funneled information about leaders of the Genovese crime family through secret wiretaps, the report said.
The website said it culled its information from confidential FBI affidavits obtained in response to Freedom of Information Act requests, court records, interviews with Genovese gangsters, and law enforcement officials.
“Beginning in the mid-1980s and spanning several years, Sharpton’s cooperation was fraught with danger since the FBI’s principal targets were leaders of the Genovese crime family, the country’s largest and most feared Mafia outfit,” the Smoking Gun said.
“In addition to aiding the FBI/NYPD task force, which was known as the “Genovese squad,” Sharpton’s cooperation extended to several other investigative agencies,” it said.
The Smoking Gun reported that Genovese squad investigators, representing both the FBI and the New York City Police Department, said Sharpton “deftly extracted information from wiseguys,” with one Gambino mobster so comfortable with the activist minister that he talked openly during 10 wired meetings about gangster goings-on – from “shylocking and extortions to death threats and the sanity of Vincent ‘Chin’ Gigante,” the Genovese crime boss who acted insane to fend off scrutiny by the feds.
“Records obtained by [The Smoking Gun] show that information gathered by Sharpton was used by federal investigators to help secure court authorization to bug two Genovese family social clubs, including Gigante’s Greenwich Village headquarters, three autos used by crime family leaders and more than a dozen phone lines,” the website said.