New NSC Head Carlucci to Brief President Daily

Frank C. Carlucci, President Reagan’s new national security adviser, plans to take advantage of his White House “proximity to the President” to ensure that Reagan is aware of what the National Security Council staff is doing, a senior White House official said Wednesday.

Carlucci will meet daily with Reagan, the official said, adding that the staff will maintain its role in coordinating Administration responses to foreign policy crises.

The new assistant to the President for national security affairs began his job last Friday, moving into the office in the northwest corner of the White House West Wing that had been occupied by Vice Adm. John M. Poindexter. Poindexter resigned Nov. 25 after the disclosure that money paid for weapons sold to Iran was diverted to the anti-Sandinista rebels fighting in Nicaragua.

Carlucci met with Reagan informally Saturday at the White House and has conferred with him twice since then at Bethesda Naval Medical Center, where the President underwent prostate surgery Monday.

Job of Rebuilding

As the new director of the National Security Council staff, Carlucci has been given the job of rebuilding the White House unit that has been at the center of the Iran arms affair and has faced sharp criticism--not only for its role in the emerging scandal, but for its efforts to take over a variety of foreign policy operations.

The senior official said that Carlucci viewed his job as building the National Security Council staff for future work and that there is “a fire wall” between the Iran issue and the White House unit as it begins a new year.

Carlucci moved quickly even as he was taking over his office, shifting several key aides and bringing in a new deputy director, Army Lt. Gen. Colin Powell, commander of the 5th Corps in West Germany. Powell was dispatched Wednesday to run an interagency meeting on arms control, and Carlucci was said by the senior official to have set up a new policy review group to bring deputy and under secretaries to interagency discussions before major issues are brought to the Cabinet and the President.

The arrival of Carlucci, who was deputy secretary of defense in 1981 and 1982, and Powell, who was Defense Secretary Caspar W. Weinberger’s military aide before moving to Germany last year, is likely to increase the coordination between the Pentagon and the White House and has left Weinberger in the position of having two close former aides in senior White House jobs.

Will Present Options

Carlucci, the fifth person in six years to hold his post, believes that the NSC staff’s “highest priority . . . is to force the decision-making process” and to make sure that Reagan has “all the options presented to him,” said the White House official, who spoke on the condition that he not be identified.

With Weinberger and Secretary of State George P. Shultz spending several weeks a year traveling, as well as additional time testifying before Congress, Carlucci is the most senior foreign policy official with daily access to Reagan.

The White House official said that this will allow Carlucci to “send signals” to the government bureaucracy, even though key national security departments are headed by the Cabinet secretaries.

However, the senior White House official said, Carlucci does not expect to brief Reagan privately. Instead, he will present a daily update of foreign policy developments to the President after Reagan has been given a domestic affairs briefing each morning, with Vice President George Bush and White House Chief of Staff Donald T. Regan present.