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Web of Watergate entangled Lincoln native
Editor's note: The following article was written by
Daily Nebraskan staff member Ivy Harper for a depth
reporting class at UNL. She is a senior majoring in
journalism and political science.
By Ivy Harper
His rise in the legal worl was fast. At 35, G.
Bradford Cook became the youngest chairman ever of
the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC).
But his downfall was faster. After two months as
head of the prestigious commission, Bradford Cook
resigned.
He did so voluntarily not because he wanted to,
but because on April 19, 1973, Cook lied to a federal
grand jury investigating illegal contributions to the
Nixon re-election committee.
The native Nebraskan and 1962 University of
Nebraska College of Law graduate changed his
perjurious testimony one month later-but by then
the damage was done.
Web of deceit
By then he had become entangled in a web of
deceit woven, he says, by Maurice Stans, John
Mitchell and Robert Vesco.
By then, his reputation and credibility were
questioned and his respect for the friends his father
had introduced him to was crumbling.
His lie, told to a grand jury to protect Stans,
family friend and former chief fund-raiser for the
Committee to Re-elect the President, resulted in
Cook's resignation from SEC, personal disgrace and
possible disbarment in Nebraska and Illinois.
"By then, his reputation and
credibility were questioned and his
respect for the friends his father had
introduced him to was crumbling."
Today, Cook awaits judgment by the Nebraska
Supreme Court on his fitness to remain a member of
the bar.
A judgment that his father awaits anxiously.
His father is George Cook, multimillionaire
president of Bankers Life Nebraska, a man who today
exudes the pain of a father who has introduced his
son to bad company.
Father, son look-alikes
Look-alikes with balding crowns and intense eyes,
both Cooks say they are optimistic about the future,
but both would do things differently if they could.
Currently, Cook acts as a consultant in
Washington, but so that no further conflicts arise he
has not practiced law for the last two years.
Cook, who left Nebraska in 1962 for Chicago,
began working there in the firm of Winston and
Strawn. He worked in corporate finance law and had
moved from an associate to a partner when he left in
1971 to become general counsel to the SEL. He and
his wife moved to Washington, D.C., where on March
3, 1973, Cook was sworn in as chairman.
The chairman of the SEC is appointed by the
president, and that makes it "somewhat political"
Cook says, but "I feel 1 got it because I was
competent."
It was while he was general counsel that Cook first
became familiar with the SEC investigation of Robert
Vesco, who was allegedly looting hundreds of
millions of dollars in investor money. And it was then
Cook met Maurice Stans for the first time.
Missing money
Later, on a hunting trip to Eagle Lake, Tex., in
November 1972 when Cook asked Stans if the
missing Vesco money had gone to the Nixon
committee, Stans replied that he did not know, but
that he would find out, Cook says.
During the trip, Cook says, the discussion centered
on "elevating me to SEC chairman." Stans never
brought up the subject of the missing money and "I
wasn't in a position to cross-examine him," Cook
says.
The subsequent lawsuit, where Cook was
chairman, against Vesco, did not explore Vesco's
contributions to former President Nixon's re-election
efforts.
The decision not to mention the money wasn't his,
Cook says. He says he went along with it willingly
because Stans told him the grand jury investigation
was a witchhunt.
When he was confronted by Stans during a
"conversation that never takes place," Cook had not
had any contact with Stans.
'Wouldn't have gone'
"If I had any idea of what was really going on,"
Cook says, "I would never have gone along."
He said he did not know at the time that $200,000
in missing funds in the SEC's investigation were in
fact illegal contributions to CREEP.
And when Cook did find out what was going on,
according to his attorney Johnathan Rosner of New
York City, Cook reacted sharply and incredulously.
Rosner suggested to Cook that Stans had perhaps
dangled the chairmanship in front of him so that
Cook would refrain from revealing the contact he had
had with Stans during the Vesco investigation.
In a hearing, Rosner quoted Cook as saying, "If I
thought they were trying to buy my silence by
offering me the chairmanship of the commission, I
wouldn't have taken it. I think I'm competent to have
had that position on the merits."
Many merits
Cook's merits, as described by friends, are high.
One former fellow law student said, "Cook has
always been an ethical, honest person. I think he just
got caught up in the Watergate web."
The Watergate web, which resulted in the downfall
of many young lawyers, and in which Cook got
entwined, is slowly fading.
Bud too slowly for Cook, who has been waiting
almost two years.
"It's like someone following you innhe dark, and
you don't know whether he is going to hug you or
shoot you," he says.
"But you have to be optimistic or you eat yourself
up alive. There is a tremendous amount of anxiety. It
is very disconcerting."
Better man
Cook says he regrets his actions but that he thinks
he is a better man because of what happened.
He does not know what the future hold for him,
but "I always hope time heals."
"People say to me, 'you reached the pinnacle' and
'where do you go now?' "
But Cook says there are different ways to measure
success.
His ambition is to open a law office in
Washington-he has the building but he is waiting to
see how the Nebraska Supreme Court rules in his
disbarment case. Currently, Cook has an application
pending with the District of Columbia Bar Assoc. to
practice law.
Ethics important
"Ethics are playing a larger part in life," Cook
says, "and they should."
"I lied," Cook says, "and I admitted it, but then I
bent over backwards to be helpful. I did my best."
Cook's father, active in the 1972 Nebraska CREEP
campaign, says he is proud of the way his son acted.
But about Stans he says, "I am very, very
disappointed. I think Stans feels bad, too, about what
happened."
His father is not the only one who thinks Cook did
his best. Cook received letters from more than 50
lawyers and , businessmen telling him they would
vouch for his integrity. Among them are:
Continued on p. 7
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