Malcolm Toon

Malcolm Toon  link C-SPAN (Diplomat,spook)
File:Malcolm Toon.jpg
Born	July 4, 1916 Troy, New York,USA
Died	February 12, 2009 Pinehurst, North Carolina,USA
Nationality	US
US spooky diplomat and Cold War hardliner who wrote a working paper on Dealing with the Soviet Union in the 1980's for the 1981 Bilderberg

Malcolm Toon was a spooky US diplomat, Cold War hardliner and former Ambassador to the Soviet Union who wrote a working paper on Dealing with the Soviet Union in the 1980's for the 1981 Bilderberg.

Education

After attending school, Malcolm Toon began his undergraduate studies at Tufts University, which he completed with a Bachelor of Arts (B.A.) in 1937. He completed his postgraduate studies at Tufts University in 1939 with a Master of Arts (M.A.). In addition, he completed study visits at Middlebury Colleg and Harvard University. After the US entry into the Second World War on December 8, 1941, he joined the US Navy in 1942. In the Pacific theater, he was a PT boat skipper, and received the Bronze Star Medal for valor.

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. Just before George Kennan was appointed to Moscow, Toon and another future Ambassador, Richard Davies, wrote an essay for the Foreign Service Journal in March 1952 entitled "After Containment, What?" in which they argued for a much more confrontational policy and active efforts to detach Eastern Europe from the Soviet orbit.

In 1965, Toon had become the U.S. embassy's third-ranking official when the Soviets exposed him for running a spy ring, accusations which were officially denied by the U.S., and the Soviets chose not to expel him. 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 had been put up for Moscow by NSC Advisor Henry Kissinger, who saw the value of a hardliner in the Moscow post. The Soviets did not want Toon as ambassador, and had prevented his nomination already in 1973.

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. Secretary of State Cyrus Vance then negotiated SALT II with Soviet Ambassador Anatoly Dobrynin without Toon, causing an upset Toon to publicly question the agreement's verification procedure. President Carter signed the treaty but when Soviet-American relations deteriorated he withdrew it from consideration by the U.S. Senate.