Mr. BELNICK: And did you begin developing the view, particularly as of November 10—we'll talk about the additional press guidance that you got on that day—that the President's advisers were misleading him and not giving him the facts concerning what had actually transpired in the Iran initiative?

Secretary SHULTZ: I developed a very clear opinion that the President was not being given accurate information, and I was very alarmed about it, and it became the preoccupying thing that I was working on through this period, and I felt that it was tremendously important for the President to get accurate information so he could see and make a judgment.

His judgment is excellent when he is given the right information, and he was not being given the right information, and I felt as this went on that the people who were giving him the information were, in a sense-had-I think I even used the word with some of my advisers, they 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. At least that's the way it was-I don't want to try to attribute motives to other people too much, although I realize I have, but that's the way it shaped up to me.

So I was in a battle to try to get what I saw as the facts to the President and get-and see that he understood them. Now, this was a very traumatic period for me because everybody was saying I'm disloyal to the President, I'm not speaking up for the policy, and I'm battling away here, and I could see people were calling for me to resign if I can't be loyal to the President, even including some of my friends and people who had held high office and should know that maybe there's more involved than they're seeing.

And I frankly felt that I was the one who was loyal to the President, because ( was the one who was trying to get him the facts so he could make a decision, and I must say as he absorbed this he did, he made the decision that we must get all these facts out. But it was-it was a battle royal.

Mr. BELNICK: Mr. Secretary, in that battle royal to get out the facts which you waged and which the record reflects that you waged, who was the other side?

Secretary SHULTZ: Well, I can't say for sure. I feel that Admiral Poindexter was certainly on the other side of it, I felt that Director Casey was on the other side of it, and I don't know who all else. But they were the principals.