United States Ambassador to the Soviet Union Nomination of Thomas J. Watson, Jr.

The President today announced that he will nominate Thomas J. Watson, Jr., of Connecticut, to be Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary of the United States to the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. He will replace Malcolm Toon who is resigning.

Watson was born January 8, 1914, in Dayton, Ohio. He received his B.A. in 1937 from Brown University. He served in the U.S. Army Air Corps as lieutenant colonel from 1940 to 1945.

He has been with International Business Machines Corp. since 1937, successively as vice president, executive vice president, president, chairman of the board, and presently as chairman of the executive committee.

Since 1978 he has been Chairman of the General Advisory Committee of the Arms Control and Disarmament Agency. He has served on the President's Advisory Committee on Labor-Management Policy; as director of Bankers Trust Co., Pan American World Airways, Time, Inc.; and as trustee of the American Museum of Natural History, Brown University, and Rockefeller Foundation.