Malcolm Toon

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. 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.