Secretary of State George Shultz testified Thursday that White House aides isolated President Reagan and fed him false information about their plans to swap arms for hostages with Iran.
When the arms deal began to unravel last fall, Shultz said, members of the White House clique were relying on Reagan`s ability as a communicator to save them.
In seven hours of compelling testimony before the Iran-contra congressional investigative committees, Shultz described how the late CIA Director William Casey and members of the National Security Council staff seized virtual control of a significant part of American foreign policy.
Shultz said he was cut off from the President when he tried to warn him about the dangerous course being followed by Casey, national security adviser John Poindexter and Marine Lt. Col. Oliver North.
In retaliation, he said, he became a victim of bureaucratic civil war by those in the White House who attacked him as disloyal and tried to freeze him out of policy decisions. He said he tried to resign three times between 1983 and 1986, but Reagan refused to accept his plea.
Shultz`s comments before the lawmakers and the TV cameras brought into the open the bitter conflict and infighting that had developed within the administration over Central America and Middle East policies. Shultz`s testimony–a rare account of inside turmoil from a sitting Cabinet officer
–made it apparent that at times the admistration was virtually at war with itself.
The most dramatic moments came when Shultz described the President`s reaction last December upon learning about a so-called nine-point agenda passed on by North for additional arms-for-hostages sales. The proposal was drawn up after the failure in May, 1986, of Robert McFarlane`s secret mission to Tehran to obtain the release of American hostages held by pro-Iranian terrorists in Lebanon. McFarlane is a former national security adviser.
Among the negotiation points was the release of 17 terrorists jailed in Kuwait after an attack on the U.S. Embassy. They had been linked to the bombing of the U.S. Marine barracks in Lebanon in 1983 in which 241 American servicemen were killed.
”I have never seen him so mad,” Shultz recalled of the President`s reaction. ”He`s a very genial, pleasant man and . . . he`s very easygoing, but his jaw set and his eyes flashed, and both of us, I think, felt the same way about it.”
When the arms dealings were disclosed last November, Shultz said the President insisted in public statements that he never intended any arms-for-hostages swap. Shultz charged that the President was not given accurate information and that this omission later proved embarrassing and forced Reagan to retract statements on the matter.
”I developed a very clear opinion that the President was not being given accurate information, and I was very alarmed about it,” Shultz said.
”And it became the preoccupying thing that I was working on through this period. . . . His judgment is excellent when he`s given the right information, and he was not being given the right information and I felt as this went on that the people who were giving him the information were, in a sense . . . had a conflict of interest with the President.”
Shultz then made a startling statement about some of the President`s advisers. They were, he said, ”trying to use his undoubted skills as a communicator to have him give a speech and give a press conference and say these things, and in doing so, he would bail them out.”
As a result of his efforts, Shultz testified, people demanded his resignation for being disloyal to the President. ”I frankly felt,” he said, ”that I was the one who was loyal to the President, because I was the one who was trying to get him the facts so he could make a decision. And I must say as he absorbed this, he did. He made the decision that we must get all these facts out, but it was a battle royal.”
Members of the congressional committees seemed entranced by Shultz`s testimony about the high-level struggle.
”We`ve seen elements of an internal coup here by people who were giving the President of the United States bad information and preventing him from making decisions on accurate facts,” Sen. Sam Nunn (D., Ga.) said, in an apparent reference to Adm. Poindexter.
Poindexter testified last week that he alone made the decision to divert the Iran arms-sales profits to the contras of Nicaragua and did not tell Reagan about the diversion to give him ”deniability” and to save him from political embarrassment.
Nunn said Shultz ”told a story that indicated the President of the United States has been abused. He`s been manipulated. He`s been intentionally misled. In some cases, he had been left out of important decisions.”
”I think it`s been an astounding day,” Nunn said of Shultz`s disclosures.
Sen. William Cohen (R., Me.) called the testimony ”unmatched” by any he has ever heard from a Cabinet officer. ”It has a profound impact.”
Sen. David Boren (D., Okla.) said Casey and Poindexter clearly tried ”to cut him (Shultz) out. . . . I think they knew he was giving strong advice to the President at every opportunity. I think they were afraid if he saw the President too often, that he might change the President`s mind. I think they were deliberately shielding the President from this kind of advice Secretary Shultz was giving him.”
The secretary of state also gave the congressional panels details of the arms deals that were a key element of the covert Iran initiative.
Shultz acknowledged that the President had been ”willing to go along”
with a small token shipment of arms to Iran. Between August, 1985, and November, 1986, there were four secret shipments of U.S. arms to Iran, which were handled by Israeli sources.
Shultz emphasized that he favored improved relations with Iran but no resumption of arms sales until the Iran-Iraq war ends and Iran ceases to support terrorist activities.
Shultz disputed Poindexter on several points.
Poindexter, who headed the National Security Council from December, 1985, until he resigned last November, had said Shultz told him he did not want to know about or be involved in the Iran arms initiative once the President approved the policy.
Shultz said he never made such a statement but did tell Poindexter there was no need to keep him posted about ”operational details” of the NSC because of the problem of leaks.
”But that doesn`t mean I just bowed out insofar as major things having to do with our foreign policy are concerned,” Shultz said.
Shultz said Poindexter never told him the President had signed a finding on Dec. 7, 1985, approving covert arms-for-hostages transactions that had already taken place. He also said Poindexter did not inform him at a Jan. 17, 1986, meeting that the President had just signed another finding approving arms shipments to Iran.
While at the Tokyo economic summit in May, 1986, Shultz received a cable from the U.S. Embassy in London that told of an American effort to facilitate arms sales to Iran, he testified. According to Shultz, Poindexter told him on May 4: ”This is not our deal. This is maybe going on but it`s nothing that we have to do with.”
The House-Senate panels released Thursday a White House computer message from Poindexter to North, advising the NSC aide the next day, ”Do not let anybody know you are in London or that you are going there. Do not have any contact with embassy.”
The note, labeled ”contra project,” also asked North. ”Have you talked to Casey about this?” North had then undertaken a secret plan to funnel profits from the Iran arms sales to the contras despite a congressional ban on military aid to the rebels.
In his testimony Thursday, Shultz contradicted North`s assertion that Shultz knew about North`s covert operations on behalf of the contras. In fact, Shultz said, he ”hardly knew North,” although he was aware through McFarlane –Poindexter`s predecessor as national security adviser–of the NSC aide`s devotion to the contra cause.
North testified that Shultz put his arm around him at a party last September and congratulated him for his job in holding the contras together. Shultz testified he did not remember making such a gesture and ”to build on that remark that superstructure is entirely unwarranted.”
Shultz dismissed as a ”cock and bull story” an affidavit by Robert Oakley, a State Department official who said that North had told him in 1985 that the secretary was aware of Israeli shipments of U.S. missiles to Iran.
The congressional panels released Thursday a proposed statement for the press, prepared last November by Poindexter, that stated that the President`s advisers were unanimous in their support for the Iranian initiative. Shultz testified how he objected to the statement because he, for one, never approved of the effort.
At a Nov. 10 meeting with top officials, Shultz said, he complained that
”there is a tendency to put out statements that are misleading and are false, and that`s the way you get yourself in a jam.”
On Nov. 14, the day after the President made a nationwide address denying any arms-for-hostages dealings, Shultz had the first of a series of meetings with the President. Four days later, he directed State Department officials to get all the facts together about the arms initiative but that same day Poindexter refused to tell them the full story, Shultz said.
On Nov. 19, according to Shultz`s notes, he told the President before his press conference that ”we`ve been deceived and lied to, and you have to watch out about saying no arms for hostages.” At this meeting, Shultz recalled the President saying to him, ”You are telling me things that I don`t know, that are news to me.”
Shultz testified he remembers telling Reagan: ”Well, Mr. President, I don`t know very much, but if I`m telling you things that are news to you, then you are not being given the kind of flow of information that you deserve to be given.”
The next day in a meeting with the President at the White House, Shultz discussed some of the information his advisers had given him in preparation for the news conference. ”He was given information that suggested that Iran was no longer practicing terrorism,” Shultz said. ”That was wrong.”
Shultz also testified about White House meetings in 1985 and 1986 in which he voiced his misgivings about new Iran initiatives to free the hostages. One such meeting, he recalled, was on Dec. 7, 1985, when Poindexter and McFarlane proposed such an initiative.
The President, according to Shultz, seemed to be ”on the fence,” while Shultz and Defense Secretary Caspar Weinberger questioned the proposal. Shultz recalled that the President appeared to be ”annoyed at me and Weinberger”
and that Weinberger asked the President: ”Are you really interested in my opinion?”
At this meeting Weinberger discussed the legal problems posed by the proposal, Shultz said.
The President, Shultz said, expressed concern about what the American people would say if he failed to get the hostages released. Shultz testified he left the meeting feeling that ”we had won the argument” and, in effect, that any arms-for-hostages deal had been ruled out.
However, it became clear the next month, according to Shultz`s testimony, that the President was moving in the direction of a new Iran initiative.
Shultz also said that he believed there were no further initiatives after McFarlane`s mission to Tehran in May, 1986, ”fizzled.” He said he was unaware at the time that the McFarlane attempt to free the hostages had involved selling Hawk missile parts to Iran.
In August, 1986, Shultz disclosed, he submitted his resignation to the President because he felt estranged, especially because of the ”guerrilla warfare” being waged within the White House.
”I knew the White House was very uncomfortable with me,” he said. ”I was very uncomfortable with what I was getting from the intelligence community and I knew they were very uncomfortable with me. . . .”
The President, however, refused to accept his resignation.
