Cook's first job was with the
Asbury Park Evening Press. In addition to his duties as a cub reporter, he soon became known as a good
rewrite man who could "transform a flood of chaotic incoming notes into readable, vigorous copy". Among his early assignments, he reported on the burning of the
Morro Castle ocean liner off the coast of
Long Beach Island in September 1934. While editor of the
New Jersey Courier, a small
Toms River-based weekly, he covered the
Hindenburg disaster in May 1937. Having witnessed the
airship flying overhead, he wrote a story about its anticipated safe arrival at nearby
Lakehurst Naval Air Station. He then had to quickly rewrite it after reaching the crash site with the airship in flames. A few hundred copies of the earlier edition, with the wrong story, were already on their way to news stands, and so he raced to "collar them" before they were sold. After two years editing the
New Jersey Courier, Cook returned to the
Asbury Park Evening Press. He remained there during the late 1930s and early '40s before a falling out with his boss, Wayne D. McMurray, led Cook to seek another position. Leveraging his reputation as a rewrite man, he obtained a job on the rewrite bank of the
New York World-Telegram. From 1944 to 1959, he worked on major investigative pieces for the newspaper (renamed the
New York World-Telegram and The Sun in 1950). He exposed racketeering in New Jersey and New York, and also uncovered an elaborate racetrack scandal that involved the racing commission, state politicians, and the leader of the
AFL construction unions in the New York area. Cook's most celebrated bit of muckraking for the
World-Telegram came about in the mid-1950s. He was contacted by co-worker Gene Gleason for rewrite help on a series Gleason was doing on New York City Parks Commissioner
Robert Moses. Gleason was looking into possible corruption in how Moses was implementing the U.S.
Housing Act of 1949, specifically "Title I: Slum Clearance & Community Development & Redevelopment". The memos that Cook received from Gleason and his investigatory team would become a vital resource for
Robert Caro's
Pulitzer Prize-winning biography of
Robert Moses,
The Power Broker (1974). In 1957, Cook had what he later termed a "watershed experience" which changed the direction of his career. He was approached at the start of the year by
Edward Fitzgerald, editor of
Saga, a men's "true adventure" magazine. Fitzgerald asked Cook for an in-depth piece on
William Remington, whose Soviet espionage case in the early 1950s was a national news story. Cook accepted the assignment and was surprised by what he found, namely, that in Cook's judgment, Remington was wrongfully convicted. Cook wrote in his autobiography that as a result of his work on the Remington story, he developed "a much more critical and analytical eye" on malfeasance occurring in the highest levels of government and in the judicial system. He added, "It was quite a change for a noncombative, often conservative fellow who had begun life in a quiet seacoast town on the New Jersey shore and had grown up without any idea that he would wind up writing about the most controversial issues of his day." Although he had probed wrongdoing in city and state governments, he had never questioned the workings of the U.S. federal government. Though he "considered himself a conservative", he would now frequently be a
gadfly in opposition to powerful forces in the country. Cook would go on to write numerous articles for
The Nation—sometimes in collaboration with his
World-Telegram colleague Gene Gleason—that took political positions usually identified with
the left. For instance, he became an opponent of the death penalty on the grounds that it was cruel and didn't deter crime. He grew highly critical of the
FBI,
CIA, and the
Alger Hiss perjury conviction. He went after oil companies and defense contractors. His writing made him a target of FBI investigations. In a 1962 piece for
The New York Times, Cook documented inhumane conditions inside
Sing Sing state prison. Later in the decade, he wrote about environmental catastrophes in New Jersey, and profiled militant community organizers in
Newark. In a 1966 article in
The Nation, Cook challenged the findings of the
Warren Commission that
Lee Harvey Oswald had acted alone in the
assassination of President Kennedy. In 1968, Cook signed the "
Writers and Editors War Tax Protest" pledge, vowing to refuse tax payments in protest against the
Vietnam War. In 1969 he was a part of the newly formed
Committee to Investigate Assassinations. He wrote an Op-Ed about the
1979 oil crisis for
The Washington Post that provoked a critical response from a senior director at the
American Petroleum Institute.
Cook and Alger Hiss Shortly after completing the Remington story, Cook started doing investigative pieces on a regular basis for
The Nation. These were articles that his
New York World-Telegram employer "was too conservative to run". Cook's close relationship with
The Nation began in 1957 when the magazine's editor
Carey McWilliams requested an article on the
Alger Hiss perjury case. Cook was initially reluctant to take the assignment, thinking Hiss was "guilty as hell". The following year, Cook expanded the article into a book,
The Unfinished Story of Alger Hiss. Cook maintained until the end of his life that Hiss was innocent. In an interview given at age 89, he said about his Alger Hiss book:[A]s a matter of fact, I don't think the book was ever challenged. If I had made some grievous error, they would have been down on my head right away, but it didn't happen. That said to me that I was pretty damned accurate. And everything I saw in the FBI documents in the 1970s just confirmed that I was right.
Bribery scandal In 1959, Cook and Gleason were fired by the
World-Telegram after they wrote an issue-length exposé, "The Shame of New York", for
The Nation. The reporters appeared on
David Susskind's TV show, "
Open End", during which Gleason claimed that in 1956, a high-ranking
New York City official had offered them a bribewell-paid government jobs for the two reporters' wivesto stop investigating the city's
slum clearance program. But when
Manhattan District Attorney Frank Hogan hauled Gleason in for questioning, Gleason back-pedaled, saying he had "exaggerated" the story "because I was exuberant and carried away." At that point, the
World-Telegram fired him. Cook wrote in his autobiography that Gleason had been pressured by
World-Telegram owner Roy W. Howard to back off the controversial bribery claim. Cook also alleged he had reported the incident at the time to his superiors, but his city editor denied ever hearing about it. This led to a clash between Cook and the city editor, and Cook was fired also. A subsequent
Newsday investigation found that the purported bribery offer was not unusual given the tradition of New York politicians putting reporters on government or campaign payrolls, even as those reporters were covering the news.
Supreme Court case Cook's 1964 book,
Goldwater: Extremist of the Right, initiated a series of events that led to the
Supreme Court decision in what is known as the
Red Lion case. After the book appeared, Cook was attacked by conservative evangelist
Billy James Hargis on his daily
Christian Crusade radio broadcast on
WGCB in
Red Lion, Pennsylvania. Hargis also appeared to be angry about Cook's article in
The Nation, entitled "Hate Clubs of the Air", that referenced Hargis. The latter called Cook "a professional mudslinger". Cook sued, arguing that under the FCC's
Fairness Doctrine, he was entitled to a
right of reply. He won the case, but Red Lion Broadcasting challenged the constitutionality of the doctrine, and their case against the
FCC went to the Supreme Court in 1969. The Court ruled unanimously that the Fairness Doctrine was constitutional.
Awards Cook was a recipient of the annual
Heywood Broun Award, which honors a journalist who exposes social injustice. == Personal life ==