He resigned after being caught up in the Robert Vesco securities fraud scandal and received temporary disbarments in two states for lying to a grand jury in the case.
[7] He was invited to interview for the general counsel position at the United States Department of Health, Education and Welfare, but again declined because he felt the agency was too big and it was outside his specialty.
[7] His political activities led William J. Casey, chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), to interview him for the general counsel job there in summer 1971.
[11] He won the backing of both White House Chief of Staff H. R. Haldeman and Assistant to the President for Domestic Affairs John Ehrlichman.
[12] Cook was nominated by President Richard Nixon, approved by the United States Senate, and sworn in as SEC chairman on March 3, 1973.
[13] In 1972, SEC Chairman William Casey met with Cook and assigned him an enforcement case then pending against Robert Vesco.
[14] A mutual fund company, Investors Overseas Service (IOS), which was registered in Panama, was attempting to come into the United States, a complicated process that involved changing the company's articles of incorporation, bylaws, operating procedures, finances, and governance to conform with American securities law.
[16] Vesco made a $200,000 cash donation to the 1972 Nixon presidential campaign with the expectation that he would receive favorable treatment from the SEC.
On November 13, 1972, while he and Stans crouched in a rice field, Cook mentioned that he wished to be SEC chairman and that he was prosecuting a number of cases, including the Vesco lawsuit.
Two days later, back in Washington, Stans called Cook and asked that the information about the $250,000 be deleted from the legal filings in the case.
Stans informed Cook that the Nixon campaign was going to return the money to Vesco, and asked that discussion of the donation be edited out of testimony the SEC would file with the court.
[16] Federal prosecutors began investigating possible illegal fund-raising by the Nixon re-election campaign in 1973 as part of the Watergate scandal.
[21] On cross-examination, Cook admitted to lying a total of five times under oath to the grand jury and Congress, concealing his discussions with Stans.
The Senate Appropriations Committee asked the United States Department of Justice on May 1 to file charges of contempt of Congress against Cook for lying.
He was chairman and general counsel of LearnWright, a company that develops and distributes training software for the pharmaceutical industry.