The website the Smoking Gun says that Al Sharpton is lying and his MSNC bosses don't seem to care about it.

TSG writes in a desperate effort to explain away his work as a paid government informant, the Rev. Al Sharpton yesterday claimed that he first ran into the FBI’s arms after his life was threatened by gangsters, an incident that prompted him to then record 10 face-to-face encounters with one of those dangerous hoodlums.

That story is a lie.

In fact, Sharpton’s fabricated tale is belied by FBI records that provide a clear account of when and why he began working as a cooperating informant. After unveiling his fable at a morning press conference, Sharpton repeated his claims last night at the close of his “PoliticsNation” show on MSNBC, where fact checkers and bosses alike do not appear concerned with the truthfulness of the host’s off- and on-air pronouncements.

Here is what actually happened:

Sharpton began cooperating with the FBI in mid-1983. So he had actually been working as a confidential informant for about nine months before Pisello’s purported threat, an encounter that Sharpton now falsely claims prompted him to first contact federal agents (and subsequently begin recording Buonanno).

The reverend was “flipped” by FBI agents three months after he was filmed in March 1983 (during a bureau sting) talking cocaine with an undercover agent. On a Thursday afternoon in June 1983, Sharpton showed up at a Manhattan apartment expecting to meet again with the undercover agent, who was posing as a former South American druglord seeking to launder money through boxing promotions.

Instead, Sharpton was confronted by FBI agents who showed him the “cocaine” videotape. The panicked reverend agreed--on the spot--to cooperate with federal agents, according to sources familiar with the contents of Sharpton’s FBI informant file.

Full story from the Smoking Gun