Covert: My Years Infiltrating the Mob Hardback - 2008

Featured on NPR and CNNIn 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 tantalizing 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 wiseguys who modeled 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 lifeeventually working his way up to the NBA, where he has been a referee for more than two decades.
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