Jack Lydman

Jack Wilson Lydman (February 6, 1914 – September 17, 2005) was an American actor, Foreign Service Officer, and diplomat who served as the fourth United States Ambassador to Malaysia. His career spanned the performing arts, military service, intelligence work, and diplomacy across several decades.

Lydman's early career included work with the Surry Players at the Mercury Theatre in New York City. He appeared on Broadway in 1937 in As You Like It. During World War II he left the performing arts to serve in the United States Army Air Forces, where he participated in planning the 1942 Doolittle Raid on Japan and subsequently became a division chief in the War Department's Strategic Bombing Survey.

Following the war, Lydman joined the United States Department of State in 1946 as a research assistant. He advanced through several positions, including chief of the Far East political section and deputy director of the Office of Intelligence Research. He was commissioned as a Foreign Service Officer in 1955 and posted to Bangkok as deputy director of the Research Center of the South East Asia Treaty Organization. Subsequent assignments took him to Surabaya in 1958, where he held responsibility for Portuguese Timor, and then to Jakarta in 1960 as counselor for economic affairs. After attending the Senior Seminar in 1961–1962, he served as deputy chief of mission in Canberra beginning in 1963, returning to Jakarta in 1965 as deputy chief of mission with the personal rank of minister.

On September 15, 1969, President Richard Nixon appointed Lydman Ambassador to Malaysia. He served in Kuala Lumpur until retiring on December 20, 1974. Lydman became a subject of historical scrutiny for his repeated testimony regarding the Central Intelligence Agency's provision of names to forces loyal to General Suharto during 1965, a period associated with the Indonesian mass killings of 1965–66. His 1969 confidential review of Indonesian administration of West New Guinea, then known as West Irian, was later obtained under the Freedom of Information Act and published by George Washington University in 2004.