[10] On the education beat he covered declining reading and mathematics test scores, attempts to unionize teachers and racial integration disputes until he discovered that mob-connected contractors were behind a major scandal concerning improper construction and renovation which endangered the safety of thousands of students in the school system.
[11] Later, as an investigative reporter[7] at the New York World-Telegram, he was instrumental in finding evidence that exonerated George Whitmore Jr. of false charges for having slain Janice Wylie and Emily Hoffert in the notorious Career Girl murders in 1963.
[18] In 1971, he became a reporter-producer at the public broadcasting television station WNET-13 on the news program The 51st State, where he continued working on the Whitmore case.
[22] In 1974, Raab became a metropolitan staff reporter for The New York Times where he covered criminal justice and government corruption stories, particularly those that involved the American Mafia.
During this period, he exposed perjured testimony and police and prosecutorial misconduct surrounding the triple murder convictions of boxer Rubin "Hurricane" Carter and his co-defendant, John Artis, which led to the ultimate dismissal of all accusations against them.
His book, the New York Times Bestseller, Five Families: The Rise, Decline, and Resurgence of America's Most Powerful Mafia Empires[3] was published in 2005.
He was an adviser on scripts for the 10-part television series, The Making of the Mob: New York,[10] based partly on Five Families, which premiered on June 15, 2015, on AMC.