Attacks Against Shultz, Reagan Staff Intensify : Criticism Directed at Secretary for Failing to Stand by President; Nunn Calls for ‘Wiser Men’

Calls on President Reagan to shake up the Administration’s foreign policy apparatus over arms sales to Iran mounted Sunday with increasing attacks on Secretary of State George P. Shultz for failing to stand with Reagan during this worst crisis of his presidency.

A spectrum of Republicans and Democrats, as well as former Secretary of State Henry A. Kissinger, were directly or implicitly critical of Shultz and in favor of bringing “wiser men” into the White House as presidential aides.

‘Middle of a Crisis’

“I am struck that in the middle of a crisis, the President is all alone on a parapet, and almost none of his close associates are supporting him, not just on tactics but not even on general philosophy,” Kissinger said on the NBC program “Meet the Press.”

“The secretary of state should support his President in a crisis,” he added. “In the end, it is the duty of the secretary of state to get along with his President, not the President to get along with the secretary of state.”

Sen. Bob Dole (R-Kan.), the Senate majority leader, who has White House ambitions, complained that elected Republican officials have difficulty leading the defense of Reagan “when the secretary of state is not doing anything,” when members of the Cabinet are “hiding” and when senior aides are “bickering and looking for cover.”

“There comes a time when you have to cut your losses,” Dole said on the CBS program “Face the Nation.” Former President Richard M. Nixon “never did this, but Reagan still has time,” he added, “and the quicker the better.”

Obviously concerned about the impact of the crisis on the Administration’s authority, as well as on the 1988 presidential election, Dole said that “right now they ought to circle the wagons. Either that or let a few wagons go over the cliff.

“We’ve got two more years to go, and we need a strong President,” Dole said.

Added Sen. David Durenberger (R-Minn.), chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee: “We have a stake in 1988. I’d like to see the President stronger in the next two years.”

The assault on Reagan aides on the Sunday talk shows followed news reports in The Times and the Washington Post that longtime political supporters of the President want Shultz, White House Chief of Staff Donald T. Regan and national security adviser John M. Poindexter replaced.

But “the matter goes way beyond cutting some throats,” added Durenberger. “We need some visible signs that things will be different” in foreign policy in the future, particularly in the Administration’s tendency to use covert action by the CIA instead of State Department diplomatic channels to solve overseas problems, he said.

“We need some wiser people to come in and advise him (the President) about foreign policy,” said Sen. Sam Nunn (D-Ga.), incoming chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, who was echoing the call last week of Sen. Richard G. Lugar (R-Ind.), chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, for more experienced people to join the White House staff.

Nunn, however, along with Sen. Dale Bumpers (D-Ark.), went further by agreeing that Shultz has lost some credibility because he has now acknowledged having been briefed at least twice on the Iran arms shipments, despite his initial contention that he had only “fragmentary” information on the issue.

Nunn, an influential Democrat, said that Shultz has suffered from having preached to the allies to stop arms sales to Iran while, with his apparent knowledge, the United States was making such shipments.

‘A Total Disaster’

“But it would be paradoxical,” he added, “if the man who opposed the action that has been a total disaster . . . was eliminated while people who implemented and planned the action were retained. So it depends on what else happens,” he said.

Bumpers said he is disappointed in Shultz, whose candor and integrity he had always admired. “For him to say he got only fragmentary evidence when (former national security adviser Robert C.) McFarlane says he was briefed time and time again” is a contradiction that also erodes Shultz’s credibility, Bumpers said.

The Arkansas senator also said that, although Administration officials had told Congress previously that the value of the arms shipments was about $12 million, “now we’re told it could be at least as much as $100 million that was agreed to.”

Some Information Hidden

Both Nunn and Dole indicated that not all information on the sale of arms to Iran--whether for hostages, as critics have said, or for political influence, as the President claimed--has yet emerged.

“We’ve not heard it all from the CIA,” Nunn said. Dole said that “intentionally or not,” the Administration has not yet provided all the facts.

Kissinger said that he “generally approved” the Administration’s stated goal in the Iran deal--to improve political relations with Tehran--but that selling arms to do so was “totally wrong.”

Beyond that, however, he said, “it is imperative that the daylight between the President and the secretary of state (i.e., the difference in their policies) be closed.” Asked how the Administration can recover its credibility now, Kissinger said that “the Administration has been extremely lucky (in that) for six years it has not had a major crisis. . . . The tendency has been to rely on public relations as a means to solve problems. . . .

“Now it is coming back to reality with the first real crisis after six years, and it is absolutely imperative that discipline be restored and cohesion be established,” he said.