Past of FCC Candidate Scrutinized : Appointments: Senate counsel Antoinette D. Cook received more than $500,000 for challenging a radio license. The move was legal, but some question her motives.

Antoinette D. Cook, senior counsel for the Senate Communications subcommittee and a leading candidate to head the Federal Communications Commission, received more than $500,000 in 1988 to abandon her bid to contest the fitness of a Washington radio station, a practice the industry once derisively termed “filing for dollars.”

Receiving money for challenging a station’s government-issued broadcast license was legal at the time. But the following year, the FCC took the profit motive out of such filings after scores of people, including entertainer Bill Cosby and Clinton transition director Vernon E. Jordan, had received fat payments from embattled station owners.

In some cases, license challengers recruited black and Latino partners with little money and experience to take advantage of an FCC policy encouraging minority broadcast ownership.

Others, such as Jordan, raised eyebrows by promising to work 40 hours a week at a radio station while retaining his numerous corporate directorships and his full-time law firm job. Such abuses prompted the FCC in 1989 to limit license challenge payoffs to out-of-pocket expenses.

Jordan, who is also Cook’s stepfather, could not be reached for comment.

Cook’s partnership, Riggs Radiocasters Ltd., received $2.1 million from RKO General to drop a challenge to the company’s license for station WGMS, according to FCC records. As one of two general partners with a 26.5% equity interest, Cook was entitled to about a quarter of that amount.

In an interview, Cook said that “I didn’t do anything wrong; it was all perfectly legal at the time.”

Cook, 35, added that although neither she nor her partners had any direct experience operating a broadcast station, they fully intended to operate WGMS if they were granted RKO’s license.

There has been no indication how disclosure of the payment, which received scant public attention at the time it was made, might affect Cook’s chances for nomination. But political insiders say Cook’s motivation for pursuing a license challenge will ultimately decide how the incident plays out.

“If the motivation was to (operate the station), then it was entirely proper and appropriate,” one former FCC official said. “But if the motivation going in was to file for the purpose of getting paid off to withdraw . . . then I think her candidacy could be fatally damaged.”

But one ardent critic of license profiteering strongly defended Cook’s actions.

“What was done was entirely permissible under the existing policy,” said Andy Schwartzman, director of the Media Access Project, a Washington-based consumer watchdog group. Cook “really wanted to win the station.” The case was settled at the FCC’s urging.

Cook, a graduate of Northwestern University Law School, has been noncommittal about whether she is interested in the FCC chairmanship, citing personal concerns. She said she is pregnant and has a commuter marriage with her husband in New York.

In addition to Cook, other names widely mentioned include former Justice Department antitrust lawyer Philip Verveer; Washington communications lawyer Lewis J. Paper; Sharon Nelson, chairwoman of the Washington State Public Utilities Commission, and Roy Neel, a top aide to Vice President-elect Al Gore.

Cook’s payment--as well as that of seven others who had challenged the license of WGMS owner RKO General--came as part of an effort by the FCC to end more than two decades of litigation involving stations owned by RKO General.

RKO’s 14 radio and television broadcast licenses came under review after the FCC had received many complaints about RKO’s business practices, including allegations that it double-billed advertisers and made bribes and illegal payments to political officials.

The agency subsequently sued RKO’s corporate parent over those allegations, which were resolved out of court.

The company’s lawyer, Roger Wollenberg, could not be reached. But he told reporters several years ago that “RKO would reluctantly prefer to make fair settlements in all markets than to continue fighting” the allegations.

Federal law requires broadcasters to operate in the public interest. And when there are competing applications for a station’s licenses, the FCC conducts a hearing to weigh the merits of the applicants and select the best qualified ones.

During the FCC’s hearing on RKO licenses, the company sold WGMS for $33.9 million. Of that amount, $10.4 million was then divided among the eight competing applicants in exchange for their promises to drop their license challenges.