Llewellyn E. "Tommy" Thompson Jr. (August 24, 1904 – February 6, 1972) was an American diplomat. He served in Sri Lanka, Austria, and for a lengthy period in the Soviet Union, where his tenure saw some of the most significant events of the Cold War. He was a key advisor to President John F. Kennedy during the Cuban Missile Crisis. A 2019 assessment described him as "arguably the most influential figure who ever advised U.S. presidents about policy toward the Soviet Union during the Cold War." Early life Thompson was born in Las Animas, Colorado, the son of a rancher. He studied economics at the University of Colorado at Boulder. Diplomatic career In 1928, he joined the foreign service. He was the first US representative to the International Labour Organization of the League of Nations. He was the second secretary at the US embassy to the Soviet Union from 1941 and remained in Moscow with a skeleton staff after German invaded the Soviet Union, which forced the US embassy to withdraw to Kuybyshev in October 1941. He was present at the first conference of the United Nations and participated in the discussions that resulted in the Truman Doctrine. Thompson was the High Commissioner or U.S. Ambassador to Austria from 1952 to 1957. There, he negotiated the settlement of the Free Territory of Trieste between Yugoslavia and Italy. In 1955, he represented the United States in the final negotiations for an Austrian State Treaty, which returned Austria's sovereignty after the country's occupation. He served as ambassador to the Soviet Union from 1957 to 1962 and again from 1967 until 1969. In his first term there, he developed a unique relationship with Nikita Khrushchev, which helped to contain the Berlin Crisis. He was the first American to give an address on Soviet television. Gary Powers's ill-fated U-2 high-altitude spy flight took place during his tenure, as did the American exhibition and the famous "kitchen debate" with Richard Nixon. He participated in both the Camp David summit between Dwight Eisenhower and Khrushchev and the Vienna summit between Kennedy and Khrushchev. During the Cuban Missile Crisis, Thompson served on Kennedy's ExComm (Executive Committee of the National Security Council) when the US received two messages from Khrushchev, one quite conciliatory and the other much more hawkish. Thompson advised Kennedy to react to the first message and said that the second had probably been written with