Shultz Said to Seek Ouster of Poindexter : Joint Chiefs Head Also Asks Removal of NSC Leader, Officials Say

Secretary of State George P. Shultz and Adm. William J. Crowe Jr., the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, have called on President Reagan to fire national security adviser John M. Poindexter for approving the shipment of U.S. arms to Iran to help free American hostages, Administration officials said Thursday.

But at the same time, according to informed sources, some White House staff members are trying to force the resignation of Shultz because he has publicly opposed the clandestine arms-and-hostages negotiations. And other Administration officials and former officials maneuvered to distance themselves from the Iran program while still proclaiming their support of the President.

Shultz, who has vigorously opposed any weapons shipments to Iran, told Reagan this week that “Poindexter has to go,” one official said.

Excluded From Meeting

One reason for the secretary’s anger, he said, is that Shultz was excluded from a secret White House meeting in January of this year at which Poindexter’s plan for creating the U.S. arms pipeline was approved.

Crowe, who according to Pentagon officials did not know of the arms shipments at all until they were reported in newspaper accounts, has told Defense Department officials that he has lost confidence in Poindexter and does not believe he can continue working with him, the official said.

Crowe, asked Wednesday about reports that he had clashed with Poindexter, replied: “I think those reports are highly overstated. . . . I have worked very closely with Admiral Poindexter for a year now. He is a friend of mine of long standing. I’m a strong admirer of his.”

But knowledgeable sources said that in private, Crowe has been bitterly critical of his fellow admiral Poindexter.

Supervision by Poindexter

Poindexter supervised the program, approved by Reagan last January, under which U.S. anti-tank and anti-aircraft missiles were sold directly to Iran while Iranian officials worked for the release of Americans held hostage in Lebanon.

Shultz, who opposed any such deal when it was first discussed inside the White House last year, was deliberately excluded from the January meeting that launched the direct U.S. shipments, the officials said.

Secretary of Defense Caspar W. Weinberger was present at the January meeting and objected to the shipments, they said. But he was overruled by Reagan, Poindexter and White House Chief of Staff Donald T. Regan, they said.

State Department spokesman Charles Redman said Thursday night that he did not know whether Shultz had called for Poindexter’s ouster. “This is the first I’ve heard of that,” he said. “Obviously, there’s nothing I can say about it.”

But Shultz has made it clear over the past two weeks that he is deeply unhappy with the way the Iranian negotiations were run. He has authorized the State Department to say that he was “only sporadically informed” about the operation of the secret project.

In return, Shultz himself has become the target of a behind-the-scenes campaign by some White House aides to fix the blame for Reagan’s failure to sell the public on his explanation of his Iran policy.

White House spokesman Larry Speakes said Thursday that Shultz participated in two meetings with the President in which the operation was discussed.

Claim Contradicted

And Robert C. McFarlane, who as Poindexter’s predecessor as national security adviser was the architect of the negotiations with Iran, directly contradicted Shultz’s claim that he knew little about the operation. “I told him repeatedly and often of every item that went on in this enterprise,” McFarlane said.

“They don’t know what they’re doing over there,” said a former senior aide to Reagan who retains close ties to the White House. “But they are united in pointing the finger at George Shultz for disloyalty.

“They say he’s the reason you can’t engender public and congressional support for the President, that everybody says, ‘how can you expect me to support the policy when your own secretary of state isn’t on board? ‘ They’re trying to scapegoat Shultz.”

Resignation Predicted

That source and two others--a senior White House aide and another former senior aide who maintain close relations with the White House--predicted that Shultz would soon resign of his own accord.

“He’ll leave sooner rather than later because he’s fed up and has had it and his own credibility can’t be repaired,” said one of the former aides, who is sympathetic with Shultz.

A senior State Department official said any report that the White House staff is seeking to oust Shultz “is not worthy of comment--I’ve heard absolutely nothing even remotely like that.”

Shultz himself has spoken out strongly against the arms-and-hostages policy and, during a television interview last Sunday, indicated that he had discussed with Reagan the possibility of resigning.

Denies Resignation Talk

In his news conference Wednesday, however, Reagan denied that there had been any talk of resignation. The President said Shultz “has made it plain he will stay as long as I want him, and I want him.”

Despite the President’s expression of support for Shultz, the resignation talk has stimulated interest in the post by both Treasury Secretary James A. Baker III and former Senate Majority Leader Howard H. Baker Jr. (R-Tenn.), each of whom has had a long-time interest in being secretary of state.

Both Bakers were traveling Thursday and were unavailable for comment.

Baker’s Interest Reported

However, a source close to Howard Baker said that the former senator, now a Washington attorney, had been contacted by an Administration official about his interest in the post if Shultz were to leave. And another source close to Howard Baker, who has been considering a possible presidential candidacy in 1988, said he is definitely interested in the post if it becomes vacant.

McFarlane was only one of several Administration officials and former officials now seeking to divorce themselves from the spreading controversy. He said he now believes those arms shipments were a “mistake”--but only because the public misunderstood their subtle diplomatic objective.

The former national security adviser said in a statement Thursday that he endorsed providing “modest levels of defensive military equipment” to moderate elements in Iran. But he said he had made “a serious error in judgment” by failing to realize that the American public would not accept “a distinction between the need to strengthen reform-oriented Iranians and the unacceptable trading of arms for hostages.”

Weinberger, meanwhile, this week has publicly praised Reagan’s approval of the secret arms shipments as “well-justified” even as Pentagon aides were leaking documents indicating that Weinberger had called overtures to Iran “absurd.”

Poindexter portrayed the Iranian overture as having been rigorously discussed in the Administration’s highest councils. But White House aides separately have ruled out almost all the high officials said to have have been involved in the discussions.

Assert Ignorance

And at the State Department, senior officials who normally claim line-by-line knowledge of Administration activities took pains to assert their ignorance of the Iranian moves. Shultz has repeatedly made it clear that he disapproved of the Iran deal at the start and unrelentingly opposed it--in private--until it unraveled this month.

McFarlane’s statement was issued by his office here after he was quoted in a newspaper interview as saying that it was “a mistake to introduce any element of arms transfers” into the White House’s 18-month wooing of Iranian officials.

“However well-meaning and defensible our purposes were,” McFarlane’s statement said, “to the extent that the introduction of arms transfers into the process has led to understandable turmoil . . . it was a mistake.” McFarlane said he accepted “full responsibility” for failing to anticipate the outcry that his arms dealings would cause.

Officials Angered

McFarlane, now a private consultant on national security affairs, is reported to have flown to Tehran last May to meet with Iranian officials about arms shipments. His belated public disapproval of that and other arms shipments left some White House officials purple with anger.

McFarlane’s new statement, an “extension” of brief remarks published in Thursday’s editions of the Washington Post, softened his flat assertion in the Post article that the shipments were “a mistake.”

The Post article, citing both McFarlane and sources “close to McFarlane’s thinking,” mounted a strong defense of the former White House adviser, contending that McFarlane told Reagan an arms-for-hostages swap would be “wrong and unwise.”

On Thursday, one official who personally knew of--and opposed--the Iranian overtures described McFarlane’s comments in the Post, and those of the sources “close to his thinking,” with an undiplomatic synonym for fertilizer.

Weinberger, meanwhile, has taken pains to hide any disagreement with the Administration’s program, refusing to criticize it in public.

Nevertheless, several Pentagon officials told reporters that their chief had opposed the program from the start and some proved the point by reading a note Weinberger scribbled on an early White House proposal for negotiations with Iran.

‘Too Absurd for Comment’

“This is almost too absurd for comment,” Weinberger wrote then, according to the aides. “It’s based on the assumption there’s about to be a major change in Iran and that we can deal with that rationally. It’s like inviting (Libyan leader Moammar) Kadafi over for a cozy lunch.”

Since the furor broke over Reagan’s overtures to Iran, Weinberger has doggedly supported the President in public--in contrast to Shultz, who tried to mask his unhappiness with the policy.

“It is certainly understandable that the President would want to do whatever he could do to try to change (Iran’s) policies,” Weinberger told reporters Wednesday.

That approach has nettled some Shultz loyalists at the State Department, who believe their chief deserves praise for sticking to his guns. “Weinberger’s playing it both ways, saying he opposed (the program) but supports the President,” one complained.

Times Staff Writer James Gerstenzang contributed to this story.