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+---
+created: 2025-07-23
+updated: 2025-07-23
+title: Walter Stoessel Jr.
+tags:
+  - person
+  - diplomat
+  - government
+  - Ambassador
+---
+Walter Stoessel Jr. (1920–1986) was a distinguished American diplomat who served as the U.S. Ambassador to [[Moscow]] from 1974 to 1976. During his tenure, he was exposed to the [[Moscow Signal]], a microwave beam directed at the [[U.S. Embassy in Moscow]] by the [[Soviet Union]][^1].
+
+In January 1976, Stoessel was briefed on the Moscow Signal and filed a formal protest with the Soviets. He minimally informed embassy personnel about their exposure to high-powered microwave beam radiation. *The Los Angeles Times* reported that Stoessel had told his staff that the Russians were using microwave beams to listen in on conversations and that such radiation could be harmful to their health[^1].
+
+Stoessel was later reassigned to the U.S. embassy in Bonn, West Germany. He died of leukemia at the age of sixty-six in 1986. Notably, two of the three ambassadors who had served before him in Moscow and had also been subjected to the Moscow Signal also died of cancer: [[Charles Bohlen]] (died 1974, age sixty-nine) and [[Llewellyn Thomas]] (died 1972, age sixty-seven)[^1].
+
+## Footnotes
+[^1]: Jacobsen, Annie. *Phenomena: The Secret History of the U.S. Government's Investigations into Extrasensory Perception and Psychokinesis*. Little, Brown and Company, 2017.