Nation: Some Pepper for SALT

John Glenn tells Jimmy Carter to be tougher with Moscow

Just as Senator John Glenn was leaving his Maryland home two weeks ago for the airport, the phone rang. It was Jimmy Carter. His voice seething with anger, he told the Ohio Democrat that the strategic arms talks with Moscow were at a "very sensitive stage." Progress on them could be slowed, said Carter, if Glenn went ahead with a speech that he was planning to deliver at the launching of a nuclear submarine that day in Groton, Conn. What upset Carter was the Senator's intention to urge the Administration to be tougher with the Soviets on the crucial matter of how to verify that they play by the rules of SALT II.

While Glenn's wife waited in the car, Glenn and the President "went at it hammer and tongs," in Glenn's words. Said Glenn: "I have never talked to a President that way before and no President has talked that way to me before."

Was it not enough, Carter asked Glenn, that he had already assured Congressmen that verification would be adequate? For Glenn, it was not. But as the Senator later said, "When the President makes a personal plea to me, I have to honor that."

Thus when it came to launching the Ohio, the first of the Trident A-subs, at Electric Boat's Groton yard, the toughest thing Glenn said was, "Verification must be better defined ... or we risk having this vital treaty disapproved [by the Senate] or sent back to the President for further directed negotiating."

For the moment, Carter had won. Inexplicably, however, apparently no one informed the next speaker: Rosalynn Carter, who was there to weld her initials in the keel of the Ohio's sister ship, the Geor gia. Having been briefed in advance by staffers that Glenn might raise the subject of verification, she plowed ahead, reading from typed notes: "It is my feeling, and Senator Glenn understands this, that premature public debate on issues such as this can be very damaging." As for verification, she added, that is "too sensitive" to be publicly discussed.

An aide watching the normally mild-mannered Glenn said later: "His lips were blue they were so tight. If I know my man, that's just going to steel his determination to insist on his view of adequate verification." If so, Rosalynn Carter's rebuke may have been a serious blunder because Glenn, the first American to orbit the earth, is emerging as a substantial figure in the SALT debate. His fierce feelings about the important issue of verification might turn him against the treaty, despite his basic support for arms control. This would be a serious blow to the treaty in the Senate, where chances of obtaining the two-thirds vote required for ratification are very uncertain. Just last week Senate Minority Leader Howard Baker said he was "leaning against" the treaty. Among the issues worrying him: verification.