Sharpton on helping FBI: I’m not a rat, I’m a cat

The Rev. Al Sharpton said Tuesday that he’s a hero — not a snitch — for wearing an FBI wire to help take down a bunch of mobsters.

“I was not and am not a rat because I wasn’t with the rats, I’m a cat. I chase rats,’’ the civil-rights activist declared of his work as a paid government informant in the 1980s.

Sharpton, who became a government witness after getting snared in a drug sting, claims he cooperated for his own safety.

“I know I was threatened [by mobbed-up entertainment figures]. I did what anybody would do that is respected . . . I cooperated,’’ Sharpton blustered.

Otherwise, “You had two options: Get killed by the mob . . . or get killed or hurt for trying to get them out of the community. Or the other option was to leave things how they were, and I was not about to do that,” he said.

“And now, it’s like you were supposed to keep the code — what code? I’m not a mobster, I’m a preacher.”

The Rev. Al admitted to hobnobbing with Genovese soldier “Joe Bana’’ Buonanno — but suggested he was too good for “Oddfather’’ Vincent “Chin’’ Gigante, who notoriously tried to feign mental illness to dodge prosecution.

“I don’t walk around with guys who walk outside in pajamas,’’ Sharpton sniffed.

“[A report] said I was hanging out with mobsters. Hanging out? The 1980s was dominated in the music industry by mobsters,’’ he said.

“I’ve done a lot of things in my life, some that if I could do again, I’d do differently. But in this situation, I did what was right.”

He said labeling him a “rat’’ amounted to racism.

“I guess the message [the media] want to give is, ‘Don’t do that,’ because some want to act like you’re a turncoat, like you are a criminal.

“We are citizens. We’re not criminals. We’re not thugs. You’re only an informant if you’re uptown?” Sharpton blasted.

A frame from a video shows the Rev. Al Sharpton allegedly discussing a coke deal. The videotape aired on HBO’s “Real Sports with Bryant Gumbel” in 2002.AP

The idea that blacks can’t speak out because they’d be labeled snitches amounts to “stereotyping and criminalizing,” he said.

It’s “another way of using the n-word on us, that we’re just savages,’’ he said.

“If I talked about a corrupt assemblyman in East Harlem, that is good government. But if I’m talking about mobsters, I’m Reverend Rat? Give me a break.”

Sharpton insisted that he wants no police protection.

Asked why he denied being an FBI mole in the past, Sharpton replied, “In my mind, I wasn’t an informant, I was cooperating with an investigation.

“The only thing I was embarrassed by were those old fat pictures,’’ Sharpton quipped, referring to photos of his previously rotund size published with details of the sensational story Tuesday.

“Could y’all use tomorrow the new [ones], because a lot of my younger members don’t know how fat I was.”

FBI surveillance footage shows Sharpton allegedly discussing a cocaine deal.HBO

Mayor de Blasio defended the longtime agitator, saying, “I’m very proud to be his friend. I think he has done a lot of good for the City of New York and for this country.”

Even elderly Genovese soldier Federico “Fritzy’’ Giovanelli — who landed 20 years behind bars after a trial that included wiretap recordings Sharpton helped arrange — defended the rev.

“I don’t feel any animosity toward that man,’’ said Giovanelli, 82, who was convicted in a racketeering case that included the 1986 murder of NYPD Detective Anthony Venditti. “I would just forgive him even if it was him who helped put me away.”

Sharpton went under cover because he feared the feds would try to nail him on drug charges after he was caught on a now-infamous tape talking to a disguised FBI agent about a possible cocaine sale, said TheSmokingGun.com.

Sharpton was never charged in the drug incident.

Now he thinks he is a role model for his FBI work.

“I am a billboard for saying to kids, ‘You can come out of that and still make the right choice and still succeed,’ ” he said.

Additional reporting by ­Jamie Schram, Frank Rosario and Yoav Gonen