BAR HARBOR – Warren Cook Sr., who has built a reputation as one of Maine’s most successful business and political leaders, acknowledged on Thursday he did not earn the prestigious Navy Cross award despite listing it for years as an achievement on his job resume.

Reached in Portland on Thursday evening, Cook said he made an “innocent mistake” in listing the medal award on his resume. He followed up with a brief prepared statement Friday morning, saying, “The article in the Bangor Daily News in January 2003, and other previous articles about me, contained inaccurate statements about my receiving the Navy Cross while serving in Vietnam, largely due to an incorrect resume.

“I apologize to the public, the press and my fellow servicemen and women for the inaccuracy,” Cook said.

Cook, 58, who was in the Marines, said he was nominated for the award during his service in the Vietnam War in 1968, but did not actually receive it.

The Navy Cross may be awarded to any person who, while serving with the Navy or Marine Corps, distinguishes himself in action by extraordinary heroism not justifying an award of the Medal of Honor, according to military sources.

It is presented by the president for “extraordinary valor in battle” and most often is awarded posthumously, according to national veterans’ Web sites.

Only the Medal of Honor is higher than the Navy Cross.

Officials at The Jackson Laboratory, where Cook works as a senior vice president, were stunned by the news on Thursday, and were waiting for a chance to discuss the issue with Cook before making any judgments, a spokeswoman said.

Lab Director Richard Woychik, who was in an all-day conference Friday, “is anxious to have all of the information before making any decision on the situation,” lab spokeswoman Joyce Peterson said.

Herman Wright, American Legion commander for the state of Maine, said he had never heard of a Maine veteran claiming credit for winning a Navy Cross when he had not.

“I think it’s pretty sad anyone who would take the Navy Cross so lightly to put it down on a resume when he didn’t earn it,” Wright said Friday while driving to Presque Isle for the annual fall conference of the American Legion this weekend.

“I think this is a very isolated incident,” he said. “I’m in contact with 26,000 [American Legion] veterans in Maine and this is the first I’ve heard of somebody doing that.”

The NEWS received documents Wednesday evening alleging that Cook had falsely listed the Navy Cross on his current job resume. The allegation and documents purporting to prove the charge were faxed to the newspaper anonymously from a Kinko’s copy shop in New York City.

The newspaper was able to reach Cook on Thursday afternoon to ask whether the allegation was true, and he admitted he did not earn the Navy Cross.

Cook, who lives in Mount Desert, did not know anyone who would want to undermine him by alerting the newspaper of the inaccuracy.

“I have no idea,” he said.

The Jackson Laboratory hired Cook in 1998 as president of JAX Research Systems, the mouse-breeding division of the renowned lab. He assumed his new position in February 1999.

Two weeks ago, Cook was named senior vice president of governmental affairs and special projects when the lab restructured its management organization and merged the mouse-breeding and research divisions.

Cook came to the lab from Carrabassett Valley, a small western Maine town north of Farmington, where he took ownership of the financially troubled Sugarloaf/USA ski resort in 1986 after his uncle, King Cummings, the resort owner, died.

Using government guaranteed loans and a down-to-earth work ethic, Cook turned Sugarloaf into a successful business, selling off 51 percent of the resort to former ski mogul Leslie Otten in 1994 and the remaining 49 percent in early 1998.

Cook has built a strong reputation in Maine as a go-getter who is good at business and good at choosing effective leaders to work for him.

He is a member of such well-known organizations as the Maine Community Foundation, The Maine Seacoast Missionary Society and Franklin Memorial Hospital in Farmington and Carrabassett Valley Academy.

He has founded groups that help children and been an active community leader in both western and Down East Maine.

Mostly recently, the NEWS listed the Navy Cross award as one of Cook’s military accomplishment in a business feature story that ran on Jan. 4, 2003.

Cook said Thursday evening he did not call the newspaper at the time to correct the error “because I did not want to embarrass” Gov. John Baldacci, who had just named Cook as one of three leaders of his transition team charged with recommending Cabinet appointments and other high-ranking nominees to the new governor.

Baldacci, who was attending a funeral in Bangor on Friday, issued a brief statement through his spokesman, Lee Umphrey, saying, “During the past year Warren Cook has been extremely helpful in the startup of my administration and I expect for Warren to continue in this role.”

Cook and other biomedical officials joined Baldacci to get a $60 million bond package passed by voters last June. One-third of the bond proceeds will be divided among the state’s five biomedical facilities, including The Jackson Lab.

Umphrey said Friday that whoever faxed the documents about Cook to the NEWS on Wednesday evening also faxed them to the governor’s office on Thursday.

Baldacci was not aware of the faxes, Umphrey said, or any questions about Cook’s past.

Cook provided his resume to the NEWS last December to aid in the writing of a feature about Cook’s vision for JAX Research. The resume includes the listing “Navy Cross, U.S. Marine Corps Reserve” under the heading “Honors and Awards.”

Numerous Maine newspapers have published the false report since 1998, including the Portland Press Herald, the Lewiston Sun Journal, the Bar Harbor Times, and The Irregular, the weekly newspaper in Kingfield serving the Carrabassett Valley region.

In four stories about Cook in the Irregular, prior to the Jackson Lab announcement in late 1998, there was no reference to the Navy Cross award, Editor Robert Gray said Friday.

The Jackson Laboratory also listed the achievement in announcing Cook’s appointment in December 1998, taking it from the resume he provided to the lab when hired.

The Navy Cross award was listed in a news release posted on the lab’s Web site until Cook asked a lab official last December to remove the references to his military career “because it was not relevant” to his job, according to Peterson.

Peterson said Thursday she was unaware that Cook did not earn the award.

She recalled that Cook did ask her last December to remove the military references from the Web site news release, but did not tell her he had only been nominated for the award.

The news release is still widely available on the Internet.

The anonymous documents faxed to the NEWS also included an allegation that Cook falsely listed himself as a member of the 1968 Olympic Ice Hockey Team on his resume, which has been more widely publicized than the Navy Cross award.

A spokeswoman for the U.S. Olympic Committee said Friday that Cook isn’t listed as an Olympian in either of the committee’s two databases.

In the Thursday interview, Cook said he was not listed as a team player in the Olympics database because he was the fourth goalie on the team and was “on call” in case he was needed for the games in Grenoble, France.

“I didn’t suit up,” he said. “I was just on call.”