Put this in your pipe and smoke it.
A pot-loving ex-Jerry Springer producer claims he’s the man behind the audacious Brooklyn Bridge flag switcheroo.
The Rev. Bud Green, after first claiming responsibility on his website, called the Daily News on Thursday gloating about the half-baked plot.
But he might have just taken one bong hit too many.
“It was interesting that nobody knew what to make of it,” Green told the Daily News.
“It was interesting that people took it as a terror risk. We believe in nonviolent civil disobedience. The government has everybody scared s——s. Was Martin Luther King Jr. a terrorist? Was Abbie Hoffman a terrorist? The government is trying to silence people.”
A law enforcement source doubted that a pot-loving slacker was behind the carefully-planned security breach.
“We’re only looking into him because it came to our attention,” a source close to the investigation said. “I’d be surprised if it turned into anything. I doubt this guy’s story has a lot of credibility.”
The NYPD said it’s investigating the claim.
“We are going to follow up on this as we have the others at this point,” NYPD spokesman Stephen Davis said. “We are going to give it the kind of look we have given any other tip that has come along. Then we will decide whether to pursue it or not.”
The Southern California stoner was hazy on specifics but said he didn’t pull off the July 22 stunt himself.
“People in New York” contacted him after he posted a “Pledge of No Allegiance” anti-government screed on his website July 4.
Green said he came up with the idea of swapping out the American flags. The men who actually did the job were “professionals,” he insisted.
“The people who contacted me are big Obama supporters and they’re disappointed in him. He fed the military-industrial complex,” said Green, adding that he doesn’t know their names.
A marijuana activist since the 1980s, Green said he’s the founder of the POT Party — People Opposing Tyranny — which is pro-marijuana and anti-government.
He turned defensive when asked to verify his involvement in the plot.
“You look at my history and you’ll see I’m telling the truth,” he said. “I didn’t personally do it, but it was my idea. I believe in being showy and being political. You have to make a spectacle of yourself.”
He said the white flags were symbolic in several respects.
“It keeps people wondering what they were about. It stands for peace. It stands for surrender. It would make people think about what’s going in. Also the wars. Our solution to the wars is for people to smoke weed and chill out.”
The plan was to follow up the white flags at a later date with two more flags, a large green marijuana leaf on a white background and the words “Don’t Tread on Me” and a second banner with a General Electric logo covered with a Nazi swastika with bombs and guns in the background. He said he picked GE because it owns NBC and he wants to draw attention to large corporations owning the media.
“The government, the media, they control the flag and that flag is bull–t,” he said. “It doesn’t stand for freedom. It stands for tyranny.”
The placement of two bleached-white flags where two U.S. flags were supposed to be proudly waving above the bridge’s two 276-foot towers was front-page news.
New Yorkers wondered how anyone could scale the famed 131-year-old landmark undetected. Some worried about what would happen if someone with more nefarious motives could climb the bridge so easily.
Afterward, security was ramped-up at the bridge.
It was not the first terror scare on the iconic bridge over the East River.
Back in May 2013, an SUV was found abandoned on the middle of the bridge, halting traffic for hours as authorities worried if a bomb was inside. Before Sept. 11, an actual terrorist, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, ordered an underling to cut away the bridge’s suspension cables.
