George Bradford Cook (born May 10, 1937 - August 28, 2014), also known as G. Bradford Cook and Brad Cook, was an American lawyer who served as chairman of the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission in 1972. 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. Education Cook was born on May 10, 1937, in Lincoln, Nebraska, to George Brash Cook, an insurance executive, and Margaret Colman Cook. He attended public elementary and junior high school in Lincoln, and then Phillips Exeter Academy in Exeter, New Hampshire, where he graduated from high school in 1955. Cook applied to Stanford Law School and was accepted. However, wanting a career in politics, he thought it would be easier to build that career in Nebraska than California. So he applied to and was accepted at the University of Nebraska Law School. He graduated in 1961, and in the fall of 1962 joined the law firm of Winston Strawn Smith & Patterson in Chicago, Illinois, where he practiced securities law. He wed Laura Shedd Armour, a descendant of meatpacking robber baron Philip Danforth Armour, on January 22, 1966. The couple had a daughter, Jennifer, in 1975. Career Cook was very active in Republican Party politics (as was his father). A friend asked him to apply for the general counsel position at the Federal Communications Commission, but he declined. 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. 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. Cook was appointed to the position on September 1, and sworn in on September 7. In 1972, Chairman Casey reorganized the SEC to create Market Regulation, a regulatory division. Cook was appointed associate director of the new division, and retained his job as general counsel. Cook's opportunity to vault to the chairmanship of the SEC came just a year later. Richard Helms resigned as Director of the Central Intelligence Agency in early 1973. Casey, once an intelligence officer himself, resigned from the SEC to seek the CIA position. Through friends, Cook made