Jack Kent Cooke Sues Magazine, Ex-Chauffeur

Jack Kent Cooke is suing a magazine and his former chauffeur, who claimed that the Washington Redskins’ owner is a racist and implied that NFL games could be fixed.

Cooke filed a $30-million libel and defamation lawsuit against Washingtonian magazine, Harry Turner and writer Rudy Maxa, saying the article was “replete with scurrilous lies.”

Washingtonian Executive Editor John Sansing said the magazine would stand by its story.

Turner, Cooke’s chauffeur, said that once after telling Cooke he gambled, the Redskin owner responded by saying, “Well, don’t ever bet on an NFL game, because they can be fixed.”

Turner also said that after former television sports commentator Jimmy (The Greek) Snyder was fired from his CBS job for saying that black athletes were physically superior to whites, Cooke telephoned Snyder from the car and told him that his remarks had been correct but that he shouldn’t have made them public.