Credibility Undermined, Shultz Is at End of Usefulness

One of the extraordinary features of the Iran- contras affair is the way Secretary of State George P. Shultz has emerged unscathed. By pleading ignorance and interpreting his own role as that of a passive bystander, he has managed to capitalize on this foreign-policy failure. Now that the White House has disavowed any future arms-for-hostages deal, he has been officially vindicated.

But Shultz’s personal credibility is gravely undermined. Even worse in the long run is the damage that he has done to the office of secretary of state. In his public statements he seems to downgrade the secretary’s function to that of the President’s chief foreign-policy adviser; there is no mention of the secretary’s role as the policy’s executant and principal spokesman on whose word other governments rely. In actively selling the Administration’s anti-terrorist policy when he had reason to know it was being secretly violated, Shultz was a prime participant in the deception.

The specifics of how much Shultz knew and when he knew it will no doubt emerge from congressional hearings and the work of the Tower commission, but this is something of a red herring. The real issue is not the discrepancy between the recollections of the secretary and the former national-security adviser, Robert C. McFarlane, as to the operational details aired in National Security Council meetings and McFarlane’s briefings; the issue is what Shultz did with the information that he had.

There is no dispute that as early as 1985 Shultz was at the very least put on notice that plans were afoot in the White House basement to trade arms for hostages and to take some sort of initiative that would nullify the Administration’s highly advertised policy of no deals with terrorist nations. There were red flags aplenty, but Shultz, by his own admission, chose to ignore them. He later said he believed that his initial “point of view”--recommending against arms sales to Iran--was prevailing. But he neither kept himself informed nor even bothered to ask his assistant secretary for Near Eastern affairs or his CIA liaison to keep an eye on the situation.

Throughout this period, anti-terrorism was not, as Shultz has implied, merely one of many competing items on his crowded foreign-policy agenda. It was right at the top, and it went to the heart of the Administration’s image, as portrayed almost nightly by official spokesmen on television and conveyed to foreign governments by our ambassadors. The secretary himself was the leading exponent of U.S. anti-terrorism policy, and was as vocal as the President in terms of polemics.

It is also beside the point to debate whether Shultz should have resigned when he became aware that the policy that he was publicly advocating was being undercut. Some secretaries of state resign when they disagree with presidential policy or are otherwise sidetracked; others do not. Cyrus R. Vance resigned in protest over the attempted rescue of American hostages in Iran in 1980. During World War I, William Jennings Bryan did the same over Woodrow Wilson’s insistence on the right of Americans to travel on belligerents’ ships. Other secretaries of state were simply cut out of presidential decision-making--Cordell Hull from Franklin D. Roosevelt’s wartime summit meetings, William P. Rogers from Richard M. Nixon’s breakthrough to China--but they lingered in office, sometimes (as in the case of Hull) with only minimal damage to their dignity.

None of Shultz’s predecessors, however, deliberately turned a blind eye to a crucial policy change in order to provide himself with an escape route. None later claimed the privilege of dissociating himself from Administration policy while remaining in office. None blatantly promoted a policy that he had every reason to know was being subverted. It appears that Shultz can legitimately disclaim responsibility for the planning and execution of a foreign-policy disaster. But can he disclaim responsibility for participating in the deception of other governments, not to mention the American public? Where does this leave his credibility as the nation’s top diplomat? Why should other governments have confidence in a secretary of state whose excuse for misleading them is that he closed his eyes and stopped up his ears? Does he play the same game in other areas of foreign policy?

In his classic work, “Diplomacy,” the late Sir Harold Nicolson advised: “A good diplomatist should be at pains not to leave any incorrect impressions whatsoever upon the minds of those with whom he negotiates. If, in perfect good faith, he misleads a foreign minister, or if subsequent information contradicts information which he had previously communicated, he should at once correct the misapprehension, however temporarily convenient it may seem to allow it to remain.” By this standard, Shultz’s usefulness is at an end.