Another breaking story on COVERT, My Years Infiltrating the Mob, this one by Sid Dorfman of the Newark Star Ledger
Tough calls nothing new to Delaney
Wednesday, January 09, 2008
A tale of two NBA referees.
One, Tim Donaghy, due to be sentenced in federal court this month on gambling charges.
Two, Bob Delaney, who was a young New Jersey state trooper when he infiltrated the mob and ultimately moved more than 30 members of the Genovese and Bruno crime families into federal pens. Then, to give his frayed nervous system some relief, he quit the police in 1988 and became an NBA referee, adding to a resume already filled with heroism.
Donaghy will be sentenced for conspiracy to commit wire fraud and for transferring betting information across state lines. He was also charged with betting on games he himself worked, the ultimate opportunity for mischief.
Delaney knows Donaghy, but was restrained by the league from saying anything about the case, and still is. However, he is not restrained from telling the searing story of the three years he spent back in the 1970's putting a severe dent in at least two major crime families.
The Donaghy case has given fresh material to the intellectuals who sit in the stands and hurl insults onto the officials and players. Now, instead of the clever distraction, like "Hey, ref, your fly is open," there are questions about a ref's honesty.
Delaney himself gets into the act. Early last year, when the Nets were home to Sacramento, he saw actor Vincent Curatola, who played Johnny Sack in "The Sopranos," at courtside. Delaney walked up to him and said, "You're the only made guy I didn't lock up in Jersey."
Delaney, who has been an NBA ref for 22 years, left the state police in 1988 to concentrate on basketball -- he had been a pretty good player himself -- and to recover from his pursuit of Mafia thugs that left him stressed out almost beyond recovery.
Now, he finally tells his story in a detailed book titled, "Covert" (Sterling/Union Square Press, N.Y., $19.95). "Covert" is the last name the police took from a child that died at birth to make certain it could not be traced.
The book is a likely candidate for a film, even if it might mirror the movie "Donnie Brasco," which details the life federal agent Joe Pistone, another intrepid infiltrator.
Delaney and Pistone actually crossed paths, although neither knew at the time that the other was undercover. But now out of cover himself, Pistone says of the book, "Bob was a great undercover cop, and he's got a great story to tell. If he had said the wrong thing at a meeting, he'd have come out wrapped in a rug."
Delaney admits he was saturated in fear from 1975 to 1978, when he was someone else.
"I could have earned a bullet in the head at any time."
Delaney, now 56, was born in Paterson and is a graduate of Jersey City State College. He gravitated inevitably to the State Police, where his father was a captain. He became a trooper in 1973 and just two years later, the brass installed him as president of Alamo Trucking in North Jersey, a company run by the cops just to attract and bag mobsters.
So Bob Delaney became Bobby Covert, wired to the conversation and activity around him. It was at the height of "The Godfather" film's popularity, and the real thugs relentlessly mimicked the talk and dress of the screen gangsters.
"There's no telling how often they watched that movie," he says.
For three years, Delaney gathered the evidence he eventually recited to Congress from behind a curtain.
He admits his role wore on him to a point where he began to identify with the thugs around him, something that brought on post traumatic stress disorder. A chance encounter with his former college psychology professor led to informal therapy and a slow but steady recovery.
The NBA now knows Delaney as that special one of its lodge who was that courageous crime fighter. When Shaquille O'Neal, who has often said he would like a role in law enforcement, found out that Delaney knew FBI director Louis Freeh, the big center asked Delaney to put in a word for him.
Replied Delaney, tongue in cheek, "I told him he would be great at surveillance, that no one would ever recognize him."
Delaney also likes to tell of the time in 1995 when the Knicks' Patrick Ewing and the Nets' Rick Mahorn, formerly one of the Detroit Pistons' "Bad Boys," got into a swinging fight during a Sunday afternoon game at the Meadowlands.
Delaney threw them both out.
Later, he found that the good buddies had watched the rest of the game together from the locker room.
Basketball, both pro and college, has a fine, rich history of gambling scandals. Not that other sports aren't vulnerable. More recently, it seems even tennis has developed a serious problem.
College basketball reached a peak of national interest in 1950 when City College of New York performed the impossible. It won the National Invitation and the NCAA championship.
The next year, the college sport crashed.
When it was over, seven schools and 32 players around the country faced prosecution for fixing games. The New York schools, a reservoir of talent, were CCNY, Manhattan College, New York University and Long Island University.
Bookmakers in the area were thriving on fixes. The standard method was to offer a couple of varsity kids the staggering sums of $1,000 to $2,000 to influence the outcome of a game, according to the point spread.
At the finish, district attorney Frank Hogan arrested 32 players from seven colleges who "dumped" 86 games, from 1947 to 1950. A "dump" meant a final score resulted just about where the fixers wanted it.
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