The Foreign Service Journal, June 2011

FS H ERITAGE M ALCOLM T OON AND THE M OSCOW P RESS J U N E 2 0 1 1 / F O R E I G N S E R V I C E J O U R N A L 39 iplomacy and journalism are like chalk and cheese. One profession is dis- creet, the other public. One is prag- matic and nuanced, with progress measured in inches. The other is skeptical and black-and-white — ef- fectiveness is defined by impact and headlines. But on occasion, interests coincide to the mu- tual benefit of all parties. One such episode occurred in Moscow in the latter stages of the Cold War as East-West relations bogged down in ar- cane negotiations over throw-weights and disagreements over human rights, while an aging, conservative elite in the Kremlin showed no interest in breaking the deadlock. Al- most in exasperation, and certainly in a spirit of shared frus- tration, American ambassadors to the Soviet Union began briefing accredited U.S. correspondents in the Soviet capital on a regular basis. The sessions, usually held on Friday afternoons in the em- bassy, took place on a background basis — that is, off the record and not for attribution. But the correspondents could use the material the ambassador provided by crediting it to “a senior Western source” or a similar designation — an im- portant consideration since a number of American publica- tions refused to publish anonymous quotations. In late 1976 the briefings had been somewhat bland, low- key affairs under the direction of Ambassador Walter Stoes- sel. The arrival of Malcolm (Mac) Toon in December was to change all that. For the next three years the embassy and the American media were to be locked in a tight embrace to the mutual satisfaction of everyone except, possibly, Toon’s superiors in the State Department and his long-suffering press attachés. “Mac Toon knew how to manipulate the press better than any ambassador I ever knew,” says Fred Coleman of Newsweek in a typical comment from one of the correspon- dents based in Moscow at the time. “We in the media loved him for it, both his style and his substance. I like to think the country benefited from his savvy.” On the other side of the fence, Ted McNamara, then a political affairs officer in the Moscow embassy and later am- bassador to Colombia and ambassador-at-large for counter- terrorism, agrees that Toon knew exactly what he was doing. “He had three audiences in mind as he talked: the American public, Washington beyond Foggy Bottom and the Kremlin. He enjoyed those sessions. He loved to be the center of at- tention.” Toon had arrived in Moscow in 1977 with distinct pluses and minuses. Already a three-time ambassador, he was one of the most experienced U.S. diplomats of his era. He spoke good Russian, had served twice before in Moscow and had M AC T OON HAD AN OPINION ON EVERYTHING , AND WAS NEARLY ALWAYS HAPPY TO EXPRESS IT IN WEEKLY BRIEFINGS FROM 1977 TO 1979. B Y R OBIN K NIGHT Robin Knight, Moscow bureau chief for U.S. News & World Report between 1976 and 1979, worked for the magazine until 1996. From 1997 to 2003 he was BP plc’s editorial writer. Since then, he has run his own corporate writing com- pany, Knightwrite Ltd (www.knightwrite.co.uk). T hese vi- gnettes are based on notes from 62 briefings the author attended during U.S. Ambassador Malcolm Toon’s tenure in Moscow, from January 1977 through July 1979. D