Shultz Offered to Quit 3 Times in Last 4 Years

Secretary of State George P. Shultz, in an unusual public confession, told the congressional Iran- contra committees Thursday that he has offered his resignation to President Reagan at least three times as a result of friction with the CIA and White House staff.

All three of Shultz’s resignation offers were rejected by Reagan, according to his testimony, and each actually seemed to result in an improvement in the working relationship between the President and the secretary of state. But there clearly was no end to the bureaucratic turmoil that prompted them.

Explains Reasons

He said that he tendered his resignation in 1983 when he learned that Robert C. McFarlane, deputy national security adviser, had made a trip to the Middle East without his knowledge, in late 1985 when he objected to Reagan’s approval of a CIA plan to require an estimated 10,000 government employees to submit to random lie detector tests and in August, 1986, when his travel was being challenged by the White House.

But the secretary made no threat to resign over the sale of arms to Iran, despite his deep opposition to that policy.

Normally very secretive about his personal dealings with the President, Shultz previously has refused to confirm rumors that he was contemplating resignation. But his testimony Thursday was unusually relaxed and candid--leaving the impression that he had been waiting for many months to get these complaints off his chest.

In retrospect, Shultz said his most recent resignation offer last August probably stemmed from friction caused by White House secrecy surrounding the Iran-contra affair.

“I felt a sense of estrangement,” he said. “I knew the White House was very uncomfortable with what I was getting from the intelligence community, and I knew they were very uncomfortable with me. . . . There was a kind of guerrilla warfare going on on all kinds of little things.”

Singles Out Ex-Aide

As an example, he said, people on the White House staff “decided they were going to make my life unhappy” by rejecting his requests to travel abroad on one of the President’s fleet of Air Force planes. He specifically blamed Johnathan S. Miller, 34, former White House director of administration, as the “character” who tried to limit his travel.

Miller resigned from the White House recently when a previous Iran-contra witness identified him as one of many people who helped former White House aide Oliver L. North to cash traveler’s checks belonging to the contras. Miller, reached by The Times, said that approving Shultz’s plane travel was instead the job of Chief of Staff Donald T. Regan.

Shultz said that he ultimately had to send memos to the President to obtain approval for his trips, a matter he said is “no business for the secretary of state to be taking up to the President of the United States.”

“And so I told the President, I said: ‘I’d like to leave, and here’s my letter,’ ” Shultz recalled. “And he stuck it in his drawer, and he said: ‘You’re tired. It’s about time to go on vacation. And let’s talk about it after you get back from vacation. So I said, ‘OK.’ ”

Turned to Summit Matters

When Shultz returned from vacation in September, he held marathon negotiations with Soviet Foreign Minister Eduard A. Shevardnadze over the arrest of U.S. journalist Nicholas Daniloff. The two men also began to make plans for the October summit between Reagan and Soviet leader Mikhail S. Gorbachev in Iceland.

Just before this incident, Shultz had a heavy travel schedule that included such places as Hong Kong, Singapore, the Philippines and Brunei, as well as a golfing weekend in Augusta, Ga. It was apparently his personal travel that irked some of the staff at the White House.

Shultz’s complaint was reminiscent of the words of his predecessor, Alexander M. Haig Jr., who accused White House staffers of carrying out a “guerrilla campaign” to discredit him. Haig resigned in June, 1982, as a result of tension with the White House.

Just as Shultz succeeded in winning the restoration of his travel privileges in 1986, he managed in 1983 to obtain a pledge from the President to meet with him on a regular basis. As a result, the two men still meet several times a week.

McFarlane Special Envoy

The McFarlane trip that Shultz complained about in 1983 was to Saudi Arabia, Syria, Israel, Jordan and Egypt. McFarlane visited the region frequently in mid-1983, when, as deputy national security adviser, he served as a special Middle East envoy. He was promoted to Reagan’s national security adviser on Oct. 17.

Active in Middle East

U.S. diplomats, including Shultz, were very active in the Middle East in 1983. The Israeli invasion of Lebanon had bogged down and U.S. Marines were deployed in Beirut. Shultz personally helped to negotiate an agreement--signed May 17--between Israel and the Lebanese government calling for the withdrawal of Israeli troops.

When Shultz learned about McFarlane’s trip, he said, he told Reagan: “Mr. President, you don’t need a guy like me as secretary of state, if this is the way things are going to be done.” He said he explained to Reagan that foreign diplomats always find it to their own advantage to deal with a special presidential envoy rather than the secretary of state.

‘On Outs With Everybody’

In late 1985, after the controversy over the lie detectors, Shultz said he could feel a great deal of animosity from CIA and White House staff members directed at him. “I was on the outs with everybody,” he said. Shultz, who complained that lie detectors are not reliable, had made it known that he would not submit to one himself. On Dec. 19, he told a press conference that he would quit if ordered to take a lie detector test. Reagan effectively rescinded the order the next day.

But Shultz did not say exactly when he and the President discussed his resignation.

“I said, ‘Mr. President, why don’t you let me go home?’ ” he recalled. “ ‘I like it in California.’ And again he wouldn’t let that happen.”

Shultz said he did not press the matter at the time because McFarlane had just resigned as national security adviser and he did not want to leave the President without an experienced foreign policy person to rely on.

In conclusion, Shultz portrayed his frequent resignation offers as a virtue.