Shultz Says He’s Threatened to Resign 3 Times Since ’83 : Was Not in Good Graces of the NSC

Secretary of State George P. Shultz today told the congressional Iran- contra hearings that he has threatened to resign three times since 1983, but each time President Reagan refused to accept his resignation.

One of the occasions, he said, was in August, 1986, and was due to the “guerrilla warfare” going on in the White House.

Shultz said his resignation letter was sent to the President in that month but was unrelated to the Iran-contra affair, which he said he was unaware of at the time.

“It was because I felt a sense of estrangement. I knew the White House was very uncomfortable with me. I was very uncomfortable with the intelligence community. They were uncomfortable with me, perhaps going back to the lie detector business,” Shultz told the Iran-contra committee.

‘Had a Terrible Time’

Shultz said he was not in the good graces of the National Security Council.

“I had a terrible time. There was a kind of guerrilla warfare going on,” he said.

Shultz said he also tried to resign “a couple of other times.”

The first was in mid-1983 when Robert C. McFarlane, as an aide on the National Security Council, made a secret trip to the Middle East without Shultz’s knowledge.

After learning of McFarlane’s trip, which included a stop in Saudi Arabia, Shultz said he told Reagan, “Mr. President, you don’t need a guy like me for secretary of state if this is the way things are going to be done. When the President hangs out his shingle and says you don’t have to go into the State Department . . . that’s a big signal to countries out there about how to deal with the U.S. government. It’s wrong. You can’t do it that way.”

Lie Detector Dispute

Shultz said the other time he tried to resign was in late 1985 during the flap over giving government workers’ lie detector tests. Shultz opposed the effort to give the tests in a blanket fashion for national security reasons.

He said he told Reagan: “Mr. President, why don’t you let me go home. I like it in California.” But Shultz said Reagan would not accept his resignation then.

In other testimony on his first of two days before the committees, Shultz said that Reagan was deceived by his closest advisers about his Administration’s Iran-contra activities and that “I’ve never seen the President so mad” as when Shultz laid out some details of the story.

Shultz said he waged “a battle royal,” against others who had the President’s ear, to persuade Reagan to get the facts out last November after a Lebanese newspaper revealed the United States had sold arms to Iran.

‘We’ve Been Lied to’

He said he told Reagan directly last November, “We’ve been deceived and lied to,” and he cautioned the President against making any more declarations that there had been no arms-for-hostages dealing.

Shultz said he felt National Security Adviser John M. Poindexter and CIA Director William J. Casey “had a conflict of interest with the President” in trying to persuade him to hide the truth from the country and to “bail them out.”

As for himself, Shultz said other Reagan Administration officials kept him in the dark about key events in the Iran-contra affair, and that he was “sick to my stomach” when he learned some of the details.

Shultz, the highest Administration official heard by the committees in their 11 weeks of hearings, testified without immunity or a lawyer at his side and almost never said “I don’t recall,” a phrase heard often in the hearings.

The secretary said that on the eve of Reagan’s press conference last Nov. 19, he told the President, “We’ve been deceived and lied to, and you have to watch out about saying ‘no arms for hostages.’ ”

Shultz quoted Reagan as saying, “You’re telling me things that I don’t know, that are news to me.”