Bob Delaney, Dave Scheiber, "Covert: My Years Infiltrating the Mob"
2008 | ISBN-10: 1402754434, 1402767145 | 288 pages | PDF | 13 MB
2008 | ISBN-10: 1402754434, 1402767145 | 288 pages | PDF | 13 MB
In a riveting page-turner, NBA referee Bob Delaney reveals the clandestine life he led before becoming one of professional basketball s most respected referees. In 1975, Delaney had spent only a year and a half as a New Jersey State Trooper when his superiors approached him with a tantalising yet dangerous undercover assignment: to infiltrate the Mob. Delaney accepted, and became Bobby Covert, the president of Alamo Trucking, a fully-operational business used by law enforcement as flypaper for snagging crooks. At the height of The Godfather era, Delaney wore a wire and lived among wise-guys who modelled themselves on their on-screen counterparts, quoting lines from The Movie and boasting of how often they d seen it. Delaney even crossed paths with Joe Pistone, the real-life Donnie Brasco (though neither knew the other was undercover), knowing all the while that a single slip could get him killed. Ultimately gathering enough evidence to convict 30 members of the Bruno and Genovese crime families, Project Alpha was a success, but Delaney struggled with post-traumatic stress disorder and traces of Stockholm syndrome after getting too close to those he investigated. Therapy helped him come to terms with all he d endured during his three tense years undercover, and, once a college basketball star, Delaney began officiating high school and intramural games as a way to rebuild his life - eventually working his way up to the NBA, where he has been a referee for more than two decades. This is his amazing true story, with a foreword by NBA great and current TV commentator Bill Walton.