Malcolm Toon

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American diplomat

title: "Malcolm Toon" type: doc version: 1 created: 2026-02-28 author: "Wikipedia contributors" status: active scope: public tags: ["1916-births", "2009-deaths", "20th-century-american-diplomats", "ambassadors-of-the-united-states-to-czechoslovakia", "ambassadors-of-the-united-states-to-israel", "ambassadors-of-the-united-states-to-yugoslavia", "ambassadors-of-the-united-states-to-the-soviet-union", "american-people-of-scottish-descent", "burials-at-arlington-national-cemetery", "military-personnel-from-troy,-new-york", "people-from-southern-pines,-north-carolina", "the-fletcher-school-at-tufts-university-alumni", "tufts-university-alumni", "united-states-foreign-service-personnel", "united-states-navy-personnel-of-world-war-ii"] description: "American diplomat" topic_path: "history" source: "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malcolm_Toon" license: "CC BY-SA 4.0" wikipedia_page_id: 0 wikipedia_revision_id: 0

::summary American diplomat ::

::data[format=table title="Infobox officeholder"]

Field	Value
name	Malcolm Toon
image	MalcolmToon.jpg
ambassador_from	United States
country	Czechoslovakia
term_start	July 31, 1969
term_end	October 11, 1971
predecessor	Jacob D. Beam
successor	Albert W. Sherer, Jr.
president	Richard Nixon
ambassador_from2	United States
country2	Yugoslavia
term_start2	October 23, 1971
term_end2	March 11, 1975
president2	Richard Nixon
Gerald Ford
predecessor2	William K. Leonhart
successor2	Laurence H. Silberman
ambassador_from3	United States
country3	Israel
term_start3	July 10, 1975
term_end3	December 27, 1976
president3	Gerald Ford
predecessor3	Kenneth B. Keating
successor3	Samuel W. Lewis
ambassador_from4	United States
country4	the Soviet Union
term_start4	January 18, 1977
term_end4	October 16, 1979
president4	Gerald Ford
Jimmy Carter
predecessor4	Walter John Stoessel Jr.
successor4	Thomas J. Watson Jr.
birth_date
birth_place	Troy, New York, U.S.
death_date
death_place	Pinehurst, North Carolina, U.S.
spouse
children	3
education
::

Malcolm Toon (July 4, 1916 – February 12, 2009) was an American diplomat who served as a Foreign Service Officer in Moscow in the 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s, during the Cold War, ultimately becoming the ambassador to the Soviet Union.

Life

Toon was born July 4, 1916, in Troy, New York, where his father was a stonecutter, shortly after his parents had emigrated from Scotland. The family returned to Scotland when he was 6, before then resettling in Northborough, Massachusetts. Toon received an A. B. Degree from Tufts University in 1937, and an M.A. degree from the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy of Tufts University in 1938. In the Pacific Ocean theater of World War II, he was a PT boat skipper, and received the Bronze Star Medal for valor.

A resident of Southern Pines, North Carolina, Toon was married to Elizabeth Jane Taylor until her death in 1996. They are interred at Arlington National Cemetery. Toon died at a hospital in Pinehurst, North Carolina, on February 12, 2009, aged 92. His death was reported in local media and mentioned by the Foreign Service Journal at the time, but was not reported in national news, despite his prominence as a diplomat. The New York Times said it never received any word of his death in 2009, and the paper's obituary for Toon, which was prepared around 2006, was not published until 2017.

Career

After the war, Toon joined the United States Foreign Service, receiving postings in Poland, Haiti, and Hungary, before being trained in the Russian language at the Embassy of the United States, Moscow in the 1950s.

In 1965, Toon had become the U.S. embassy's third-ranking official when the Russians made accusations that was running a spy ring, which were officially denied, and he was not expelled. He then became the head of the State Department's Soviet Affairs office.

Toon was the ambassador to Czechoslovakia from 1969 to 1971, Yugoslavia from 1971 to 1975, Israel from 1975 to 1976, and the Soviet Union from 1977 to 1979.

He participated in SALT II talks from 1977 to 1979 and the American-Soviet Summit in Vienna in 1979. At the summit, Toon learned that President Jimmy Carter had chosen Thomas Watson Jr., a business executive, as his replacement, leading Toon to publicly criticize making ambassadors out of those without any State Department experience.

In the 1990s, Toon co-chaired the U.S.–Russia Joint Commission on POW/MIAs with Russian general Dmitri Volkogonov. An article about Toon's briefing of the U.S. press corps in Moscow 1977–1979 was published in the Foreign Service Journal in June 2011.

References

(February 20, 2009). "Toon, Former Ambassador, Dies". [[The Virginian-Pilot.
(May 1, 2017). "Malcolm Toon Made Waves as a Diplomat, but His Death Went Largely Unreported". [[The New York Times]].
(1969). "Nominations of Carl J. Gilbert and Malcolm Toon: Hearing, Ninety-first Congress, First Session. May 5, 1969". U.S. GovernmentPrint. Office.
Carter, Jimmy. (January 1, 1977). "Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: Jimmy Carter, 1977". Best Books on.
(November 2005). "Congressional Record, V. 147, Pt. 8, June 12, 2001 to June 25 2001". Government Printing Office.
(9 June 1989). "The Association for Diplomatic Studies and Training Foreign Affairs Oral History Project AMBASSADOR MALCOLM TOON".
Knight, Robin. (June 2011). "Malcolm Toon and the Moscow Press". Foreign Service Journal.

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