Draws Riveting Image of U.S. Leaders in Distress : An Angry Shultz Transfixes Lawmakers

Not since Richard M. Nixon’s secret tapes got out 14 years ago had there been more riveting images of American leaders in such distress.

There was an angry and astonished Ronald Reagan, his jaw set and eyes flashing when he belatedly realized that something was “radically wrong” in his secret contacts with Iran. There was the secretary of state, furious, frustrated, bypassed and sick to his stomach at the notion of swapping arms for hostages.

There was the director of the CIA stepping far beyond the bounds of intelligence gathering and into the world of foreign policy operations. And there were staff men keeping the secretaries of state and defense in the dark week after week as the Administration waded into a foreign policy wasteland.

On Thursday, after 2 1/2 months of following paper trails, constructing chronologies and cross-examining plotters, congressional investigators got a panoramic tour of the Iran- contra horizon from an angry George P. Shultz, secretary of state.

It was the most compelling account that Congress has yet heard of the bizarre scheme that went from the hope of rational contact with the radical Iranian government to ransomed hostages to private fund-raising and diverted arms money for insurgents in Nicaragua.

What was most remarkable about it was that it came from George Pratt Shultz, whose reputation for keeping the shades drawn has been earned through more than a decade of presidential service, including three Cabinet posts and at least two other jobs of like importance.

Ordinarily careful, tight-lipped and plodding, Shultz has on few occasions unleashed awesome outbursts of temper, as he did in December, 1985, when he declared that he would quit before he would accede to a lie-detector test.

Shultz is also hard-headed, and Ronald Reagan is not the first President to become acquainted with his stubbornness. An exasperated Richard Nixon, in the height of the Watergate scandal, branded then-Treasury Secretary Shultz a “candy ass” because he refused to order the IRS to audit the income tax returns of people on Nixon’s enemies list.

Shultz has never been publicly chatty or anecdotal. Thursday, in his determination to have his side of the Iran-contra story told, he made an exception, but he made it clear it was a one-time thing.

“I have on numerous occasions . . . been asked what advice I gave the President on this, that, or the other subject,” he told the House and Senate committees investigating the affair. “And I have always taken a position . . . that those conversations are privi1818584933instruction. But I mention it because, if I’m testifying before you on some other subject sometime and you try to use this as a precedent, I won’t buy it.”

Committee members sat transfixed as Shultz related a Sunday morning trip to the White House residence to lay before Reagan vital details that he concluded had been intentionally kept from the President.

The committee room in the Rayburn House Office Building was stunned as Shultz related how he had turned in his resignation three times.

Displays Distaste

In his most conspicuous public moment, Shultz made no attempt to conceal distaste for CIA Director William J. Casey’s venture into policy and operational matters and National Security Adviser John M. Poindexter’s keeping him in the dark and continuing the Iranian initiative after he had believed it had ended.

After the initial disclosure of the arms sales to Iran, Shultz said, there was a “battle royal” over the public posture Reagan would take.

“I developed a very clear opinion,” he said, “that the President was not being given the accurate information and I was very alarmed about it. . . . I felt as this went on that the people who were giving him the information . . . had a conflict of interest with the President. And, they were trying to use his undoubted skills as a communicator to have him give a speech and give a press conference and say these things, and in doing so, he would bail them out.”

Shultz’s pointed refusal to publicly endorse the policy brought accusations that he was being disloyal to the President. It is an issue that he stands to be questioned about when he returns to the committee today, for Rep. Michael DeWine (R-Ohio) suggested earlier this week that the secretary had been first interested in protecting his own position.

In making the surprising acknowledgement that he had offered Reagan his resignation on three occasions since his appointment as secretary of state, Shultz acknowledged that he had come to consider the intelligence community within the Administration arrayed against him.

Feels ‘Estrangement’

In the summer of 1986, he said he felt “a sense of estrangement,” a feeling that the White House was unhappy with him, that he “was not in good odor with the NSC staff.”

Despite his impressive credentials--secretary of the Treasury, secretary of labor and director of the Office of Management and Budget under Nixon--Shultz has been a controversial and sometimes divisive figure within the Reagan Administration.

A concerted campaign was launched against him by conservatives, who disliked the secretary’s affinity for the professional Foreign Service and were angered by his opposition to Jeane J. Kirkpatrick as a potential replacement for William P. Clark as national security adviser.

And there were long-running differences with Defense Secretary Caspar W. Weinberger, a fellow executive at Bechtel Corp., before they joined the Administration.

Aside from disagreements such as the withdrawal of the Marines from Lebanon, however, Shultz publicly appeared to have solidified his position as the chief influence on Administration foreign policy--until the Iran-contra scandal broke.

Supports Rebels

Even though he denounced the extracurricular handling of the arms-for-hostage debacle and the diversion of the proceeds to the contras, he was no less enthusiastic than Poindexter and Oliver L. North for support of the Nicaraguan rebels.

Overwhelmed by the sympathetic reaction to North’s testimony, and dubious over the account they received from Poindexter, committee members friendly to Shultz saw his testimony advancing their understanding of the episode.

Sen. Warren B. Rudman (R-N.H.), praising the secretary for efforts to get the story before Reagan, declared Shultz “a hero.”