Jacob D. Beam

Jacob D. Beam
United States Ambassador to Poland
In office August 9, 1957 – November 30, 1961
President	Dwight D. Eisenhower John F. Kennedy
Preceded by	Joseph E. Jacobs
Succeeded by	John Moors Cabot
United States Ambassador to Czechoslovakia
In office August 31, 1966 – March 5, 1969
President	Lyndon Johnson Richard Nixon
Preceded by	Outerbridge Horsey
Succeeded by	Malcolm Toon
United States Ambassador to the Soviet Union
In office April 18, 1969 – January 24, 1973
President	Richard Nixon
Preceded by	Llewellyn Thompson
Succeeded by	Walter J. Stoessel, Jr.
Personal details
Born	Jacob Dyneley Beam March 24, 1908 Princeton, New Jersey
Died	August 16, 1993(1993-08-16) (aged 85) Rockville, Maryland

Jacob Dyneley Beam (March 24, 1908 – August 16, 1993) was an American diplomat.

Beam was born in Princeton, New Jersey. His father was a German professor at Princeton University, and the younger Beam earned a bachelor's degree in 1929 from Princeton before he joined the US Foreign Service.

His first assignment was in Geneva, where he monitored the League of Nations and served as vice counsel in Geneva from 1931 to 1934. He then moved to Berlin and served as third secretary to the US embassy from 1934 to 1940. During World War II, he served as second secretary of the embassy in London. He returned to Germany after the war.

Beam was counselor to the US embassy in Indonesia from 1949 to 1951 and to Yugoslavia from 1951 to 1952. He became the ambassador to Poland from 1957 to 1961. From 1966 to 1969 he served as Ambassador to Czechoslovakia, where he was present at the Prague Spring. He was ambassador to the Soviet Union from 1969 to 1973.

Beam's support of Senator Edmund Muskie's visit to Moscow in January 1971 caused President Richard Nixon to remark at a meeting with Henry Kissinger and HR Haldeman to give Beam three more months in the role as ambassador to Moscow and then fire him. ^[1]

Beam died in Rockville, Maryland, of a stroke.^[2] His son is journalist Alex Beam.

• Jacob Dyneley Beam (1908–1993), Office of the Historian
• Jacob D. Beam paper at the Seeley G. Mudd Manuscript Library, Princeton University
• Oral History Interview with Jacob D. Beam via Truman Library
• JACOB BEAM: OUR MAN IN MOSCOW by Central Intelligence Agency

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