Khorosho,' Said Brezhnev

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Despite the forecast of modest achievements, Carter went to Vienna visibly excited. He told aides that he had looked forward to meeting Brezhnev more than almost anything else during his years as President, and he spent an unprecedented amount of time preparing for the encounter. He phoned Richard Nixon, who had signed SALT I in Moscow in 1972, for advice on how to deal with Brezhnev. Gerald Ford came by the White House to suggest that if Brezhnev became blustery, as he did at Vladivostok in 1974, Carter should respond politely but firmly and not retreat an inch. CIA Director Stansfield Turner showed Carter some video tapes of Nixon's and Ford's meetings with Brezhnev so that the President could observe the Soviet leader's mannerisms.

While Carter was preparing for Brezhnev and the SALT signing, the President's foes at home were hitting him with harsh attacks and stinging defeats. The Senate bluntly defied Carter by voting to lift economic sanctions against Rhodesia. House conservatives stunned him by mustering so much opposition to legislation setting up the administrative machinery to carry out the Panama Canal treaties that he had to ask Democratic leaders to postpone the vote.

Two days before Carter boarded the plane for Vienna, Democrat Henry ("Scoop") Jackson, the Senate's leading SALT critic, launched a blistering attack on SALT itself. In a speech to the hardline Coalition for a Democratic Majority, Jackson accused Carter—and Ford and Nixon too—of following an "appeasement" policy toward Moscow. In the seven years since SALT I was signed, Jackson said, "we have been making too many gratuitous concessions. We have silenced too many officials, bent too many laws and traditions and apologized too often. In the area of trade and technology, the right to emigrate and strategic arms, the signs of appeasement are all too evident." Of the Administration's arguments for SALT II, the Senator declared: "To enter a treaty which favors the Soviets as this one does, on the ground that we will be in a worse position without it, is appeasement in its purest form."

White House officials were enraged both by Jackson's biting tone and his timing. Secretary of State Cyrus Vance called Jackson "misguided and simply wrong." White House Press Secretary Jody Powell described Jackson's views as "grossly misleading." Said Powell: "I think there are few people with any illusions that it would be possible to negotiate any SALT treaty that the Senator would support."

Then came more bad news: Lieut. General Edward Rowny, 62, a Jackson protégé and the Joint Chiefs of Staffs representative on the U.S. SALT negotiating team in Geneva, announced that he was resigning from the Army. Rowny has made no secret of his disapproval of SALT II, and he is expected to provide the treaty's opponents with ammunition, since he can speak authoritatively about the swaps that went on at the bargaining table