FORT RUCKER, Ala. (September 5, 2013) -- A former undercover cop and current NBA referee will visit Fort Rucker to share his story and message to Soldiers, Families and civilians.
Bob Delaney will visit the installation Sept. 10-11 to speak to people on issues of post-traumatic stress in four different sessions at the post theater.
His visit is part of the U.S Army Training and Doctrine Command's Post Traumatic Stress Outreach Program and is mandatory for all U.S. Army Aviation Center of Excellence military personnel who are present for duty, according to USAACE G3 officials. Some exceptions will be made to limit the impact on the USAACE training mission.
The Tuesday sessions will be from 1:30-2:45 p.m. and 3:30-4:45 p.m., and the Wednesday sessions will be from 9:30-10:45 a.m. and 1-2:15 p.m.
Although the main target audience is military personnel, the event is open to all non-military personnel, as well, according to officials. Specific seat allocations have been designated with various unit operations, but plenty of seating should be available for others who wish to attend.
Delaney is a well-known motivational speaker, and his life story has been told on networks like HBO, ESPN and ABC, as well as in dozens of newspaper and magazine articles throughout the world, according to his biography.
He travels across the country and around the world to present leadership and teamwork seminars before corporate, university and community organizations, and for the past 30 years has provided training before federal, state, county and local law enforcement officers, and agents throughout the U.S., Canada and Europe.
Delaney has risen to the top of two elite organizations -- in law enforcement as a highly decorated trooper with the New Jersey State Police, and as one of the NBA's most respected referees. He has officiated more than 1,700 regular season games, 180 playoff contests and 10 finals.
He has authored two books: "Covert: My Years Infiltrating the Mob," which received critical acclaim and outlines his time as a New Jersey police officer working with the FBI to bring down organized crime; and "Surviving the Shadows: A Journey of Hope into Post Traumatic Stress."
Delaney visited the installation last year and spoke on how his experience as an undercover cop caused him inner conflicts that eventually led to post traumatic stress.
He put his life on the line for nearly three years infiltrating the Genovese and Bruno crime Families, after which he eventually testified before the U.S. Senate on organized crime in 1981 detailing his work, according to the biography.
Although Delaney knew he was doing the right thing, he still felt that he was betraying his friends that he had made while working undercover with these Families during those three years.
"What you ask undercover people to do is become friends with people and then tell on them," he said during last year's visit. "I broke that value of trust that we all have in our personal and professional relationships."
That break in trust that he felt between him and the crime Families partly led to his post-traumatic stress, he said, but he soon learned that in order to help his problem get better, he had to talk about it.
"Those of us who wear uniforms like to think of (ourselves) as being able to leap tall buildings in a single bound, whether it be the uniform I used to wear or the uniform you wear," he said to Soldiers during his visit last year. "While we know that heroic things are done on a daily basis by those who wear uniforms, we can never lose site of the fact that there are human beings inside these uniforms."
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