Fred James Cook (March 8, 1911 – April 4, 2003) was an American investigative journalist, author and historian who has been published extensively in The Nation, the Asbury Park Press and The New York Times. He wrote from a contemporary perspective about the Hindenburg disaster, Alger Hiss, the FBI, the Cuban Missile Crisis, Barry Goldwater, the Watergate scandal, the Mafia, the Ku Kux Klan, political bosses and healthcare in the United States. He has also written about historic events such as the American Revolutionary War, P.T. Barnum, the Pinkertons and Theodore Roosevelt.
In 1967, Cook successfully sued the religious broadcaster WGCB for maligning him in a landmark case that led the United States Supreme Court in 1969 to uphold the fairness doctrine.
He is the author of 45 books and a winner of the Heywood Broun Award for exposing social injustice.
Early life
Cook was born in Point Pleasant, New Jersey, and grew up in a house on Bay Avenue near the border with Bay Head. On his mother's side, he was descended from an old New Jersey family, the Comptons. He graduated from Rutgers University in 1932.
Career
Cook began his career in journalism first as a rewrite man and then as a reporter for the Asbury Park Press. He later wrote for the New York World-Telegram, focusing on crime reporting. He uncovered the confession of John Francis Roche in the murder case of Navy sailor Edward S. Bates, which freed Paul A. Pfeffer, who had been convicted of the murder.
While editor of the weekly New Jersey Courier in Lakewood, New Jersey, he covered the nearby 1937 Hindenburg disaster. Having witnessed the airship flying overhead at Toms River, New Jersey, he first wrote about its anticipated safe arrival at the Lakehurst Naval Air Station, then had to quickly rewrite the story after getting to the crash site while the ship was still in flames. A few hundred copies of the earlier edition, with the wrong story, were already on their way to news stands, "so I knew I had to collar them and get them back," Cook said.
Memos to Cook during this period of his career from Gene Gleason and other reporters "on the Title I scandals of the 1950s" were an important source to Robert Caro's famous biography of Robert Moses, The Power Broker.
Though conservative in many respects, Cook wrote a number of articles for The Nation magazine, together with his longtime World-Telegram collaborator, Gene Gleason, and took positions usually identified with the left. For instance, he opposed the death penalty, taking the position that it was cruel and didn't deter crime. He was also highly critical of the FBI, the CIA, and the Alger Hiss perjury conviction, as well as oil companies and defense contractors. His writing made him the target of FBI investigations against him.
For The New York Times, Cook wrote about spending time inside Sing Sing state prison, militant community organizers in Newark, and environmental catastrophes in other parts of New Jersey. He also wrote an Op-Ed about the 1979 oil crisis for The Washington Post that provoked a response from a senior director at the American Petroleum Institute. He has also written about the American Revolutionary War and the La Amistad slave ship rebellion for American Heritage magazine.
In 1968, Cook signed the "Writers and Editors War Tax Protest" pledge, vowing to refuse tax payments in protest against the Vietnam War.
Awards he has received include the Heywood Broun Award and the Page One Award from the Newspaper Guild of New York multiple times.
Cook and Alger Hiss
Cook had written four articles for The Nation when editor Carey McWilliams asked him to write an article about the perjury case of Alger Hiss. Cook did not want to do the article, thinking Hiss was "guilty as hell." After two more requests by McWilliams for Cook to do the article, McWilliams said, "Look, I have a proposition to make you. I know how you feel about the case, but I've talked to a lot of people who I trust. They say if anybody looked hard at the evidence they'd have a different opinion. You're known as a fact man. Will you do this for me? No obligation. Will you at least look at the facts?" Cook decided that, as a good journalist, he was obligated to look at the facts and see where they took him.
The September 21, 1957 issue of The Nation was dedicated entirely to Cook's investigation of the Hiss case, which was called, "Hiss: New Perspectives on the Strangest Case of our Time." In the article Cook wrote for The Nation, he ultimately was of the opinion that Hiss was not guilty of the accusations made by Whittaker Chambers who accused Hiss of being a Soviet spy while working for the US State Department.