The US Ambassador to Moscow who knew Khrushchev personally and, during the Cuban Missile Crisis, told Kennedy to ignore the second letter
"The important thing for Khrushchev, it seems to me, is to be able to say 'I saved Cuba; I stopped an invasion,'" Thompson told the ExComm during the Cuban Missile Crisis.
An American diplomat who served as Ambassador to Moscow from 1957 to 1962, building a personal rapport with Nikita Khrushchev that gave Washington rare insight into Soviet decision-making. During the Cuban Missile Crisis, on Kennedy's ExComm, he was the one who argued that the second, more aggressive Khrushchev letter of October 27 should be ignored and the first, conciliatory letter of October 26 answered instead: the strategy that became the resolution. He returned to Moscow as ambassador under Johnson and helped shape nuclear non-proliferation policy and the SALT process.
Career Timeline
- 1928Entered the U.S. Foreign Service
- 1941Second Secretary, U.S. Embassy Moscow; remained after German invasion
- 1952–1957High Commissioner and Ambassador to Austria; Austrian State Treaty and Trieste settlement
- 1957–1962Ambassador to USSR; Camp David and Vienna summits, U-2 incident, Kitchen Debate
- 1962ExComm member; key role in Cuban Missile Crisis resolution
- 1962–1966Ambassador-at-Large for Soviet Affairs and Deputy Under-Secretary for Political Affairs
- 1967–1969Ambassador to USSR; Glassboro Summit, SALT and non-proliferation policy