TIME: Almanac 1993/TIME Almanac 1993.iso/time/050691/0506100.000

Text File | 1992-08-28 | 9.2 KB | 185 lines

                                                                                NATION, Page 20

On a Slippery Slope


White House chief of staff John Sununu has long played close
to the edge in ethical matters. This time he may have slid over
it.

By MICHAEL DUFFY/WASHINGTON -- With reporting by Dan Goodgame/
Washington


    As a swelling storm of criticism buffeted his chief of
staff last week, the President finally came to John Sununu's
defense. Bush did not deny that his right-hand man had made
frequent flights on Air Force executive jets -- including trips
to ski resorts and his New Hampshire home -- that have cost
taxpayers more than $500,000 during the past two years. And
while the President conceded that the White House rules
requiring the chief of staff to fly only in military aircraft
may need adjustment, he insisted that Sununu "complied with the
existing policy."

    That may be narrowly true in the case of the flights. But
what Sununu did once he got off the planes is beginning to
raise serious ethical questions and, in at least one case,
points to the possibility of unlawful conflict of interest.
During a three-day ski trip to Aspen, Colo., last December, Su
nunu in effect received free lift tickets, lodging and meals in
return for speaking at an annual ski-industry conference. In
addition, the $802 round-trip airfare for his wife Nancy was
paid for by the American Ski Federation. The federation is a
Washington-based lobbying arm for the ski industry -- not a
nonprofit educational group as claimed on documents released by
the White House.

    Pressed for an explanation late last week, a White House
spokesman said Su nunu had "assumed" that an educational
charity, the American Ski Foundation, had actually footed the
bill for Mrs. Sununu's airfare and their daily expenses. "We
took their word for it," said the aide. In fact, the foundation
has been inactive for several years, and currently has less than
$100 in its bank account. Says Joe Prendergast, who heads the
American Ski Federation: "We used to have a foundation. It's
defunct now."

    The distinction between the two organizations is crucial.
Federal law prohibits officials from accepting payment for
travel, lodging and other expenses related to an official trip
unless paid for by a charitable or educational organization.
According to an official statement, the federation is a
nonprofit trade group engaged in lobbying on "state and federal
legislation." For such an organization to pay his wife's
expenses, a White House counsel conceded, would be "tantamount
to a gift to him."

    Sununu and his aides were scrambling last weekend to find
a way to get a real charitable foundation to again reimburse
the government for his Aspen boondoggle. A senior official told
the Washington Post that the ski industry "may have made a
mistake" and "may have to shift the payment." It was unclear how
an empty-pocketed, defunct charity would find the money to make
the accounts right. Also unclear was how much the episode had
shaken George Bush's faith in his top aide. At best, Sununu has
embarrassed himself and his boss. At worst, he might even share
the fate of his idol Sherman Adams, the New Hampshire Governor
who was forced out as Dwight Eisenhower's chief of staff in 1958
after accepting a $500 vicuna coat from Bernard Goldfine, a
Boston textile magnate.

    Sununu's three-day ski trip, to which taxpayers
contributed about $30,000 in jet fuel and operating expenses,
cost Sununu and his wife virtually nothing. Officials at one
Aspen hotel that played host to the event estimated that the
normal three-day, two-night cost of modest meals, lodging and
lift tickets for two people in early December 1990 would have
totaled at least $800. The conference schedule, which featured
several workshops on ski apparel and equipment, included a block
of time each afternoon set aside for "free skiing." Linda
Wallen, a spokeswoman for Times Mirror Magazines, which
publishes Ski, explained that Sununu was invited to speak at the
magazine's "Ski Week" event because "he's really knowledgeable
about the issues" confronting the industry. She said the company
"normally" picks up the expenses of official speakers and their
spouses, including lift tickets. Though Su nunu listed it as an
"official" trip, a spokesman admitted that "the organizers of
the conference" paid for the Sununus' expenses.

    In Sununu's defense, it could be said that accepting
dubious speaking invitations on flimsy pretexts of "official
business" is a time-honored Washington tradition. Junketing is
a favorite pastime of members of Congress and their spouses, who
routinely take off in military aircraft for "investigative"
missions -- to Caribbean beaches in the winter and the cafes of
Europe when the weather turns warmer.

    A more solid excuse is the fact that Ronald Reagan in 1987
authorized his chief of staff and the National Security Adviser
to make "official business" trips on Air Force jets. Reagan
recognized the need to maintain secure communications at all
times with top aides, as well as to counter the threat of
kidnapping and terrorism. Yet rules issued later that year made
it clear that those two senior officials could take
personal-vacation trips on the Air Force fleet only if the
government was reimbursed at commercial rates plus $1.
Furthermore, such trips were to be evaluated "on the basis of
appearance or impropriety."

    That is where Sununu slipped up. Whether or not his
December 1990 ski junket involved illegal gift taking, he was
clearly guilty of poor judgment in making such liberal use of
government aircraft. In the Bush Administration, the cardinal
rule is not merely to avoid conflicts of interest but to avoid,
as the President put it, "even the appearance of what is wrong."
Bush laid down this code partly because he has long believed in
it and partly because he was appalled by the lax ethics of the
Reagan era. Sununu's disregard of this principle has many Bush
allies very angry. Said one: "What's good for the goose ought
to be good for the gander, but it isn't for Sununu."

    And it never has been. Sununu's insensitivity to conflicts
of interest was apparent during his tenure as New Hampshire
Governor from 1983 to 1988. He took trips on state planes for
purposes that aides considered personal and political. He used
personal computers that were "lent" to him by firms doing
business with the state. The father of eight, he accepted
tuition waivers and subsidies from Tufts University for his
children long after he had stopped teaching there. Such habits
have troubled even some of Sununu's longtime friends. As a
former colleague puts it, Sununu "always played right at the
edge" in ethical matters. Says another Sununu ally from New
Hampshire: "John was a taker even when he was Governor. He is
one who has always seen fit to exercise power rather than
discretion."

    Since early 1989, Sununu has taken more than 70 trips,
including 16 to New Hampshire. He claimed only four as
"personal" and listed reimbursements amounting to just $45,000
of the nearly half a million dollars in total travel costs. On
one "official" journey, Sununu gave a speech at an Illinois
state and county G.O.P. fund raiser and then attended a longtime
aide's nearby wedding. Several former aides said last week that
Sununu was cautioned that such "dual-use" trips were improper.
"It's political stupidity," said a senior Republican, "but it's
more than that. It's pathological arrogance. You know how when
you get drunk, you think you're invisible and you can do all
these things nobody can see? Well, John Sununu thinks he's
invisible all the time. He thinks the normal rules . . . are for
other people."

    Sununu kept to himself last week, refusing interviews and
acting, in the words of aides, "very stoic about all this." But
there were signs that Bush, while careful to support Sununu in
public, was smoldering in private. It was only on Bush's order
that Su nunu released his travel records to the press last
week. A White House aide said the President was particularly
embarrassed by suggestions that his top lieutenant was using
taxpayer-subsidized flights to nurture Bush's Republican
political base in New Hampshire. That impression, they said, had
moved Bush to call for a legal review of the rule requiring the
chief of staff to fly in Air Force planes. Said the President:
"If that policy leads to a perception problem, then I'll take
a look at it."

    The President may be correct to think he can defuse the
controversy merely by revising the policy. But he is wrong to
suggest that the policy -- rather than Sununu -- caused "the
perception problem." Over the weekend, the former Governor began
to experience the drip-drip-drip of damaging details that in the
past has been part of the ritual undoing of other controversial
government figures. It would be premature to count out any man
who brashly sought and obtained Sherman Adams' license-plate
number before coming to Washington. But there is a growing sense
in Washington that Sununu is wounded -- and the many
constituencies he has managed to alienate over the past two
years may be moving in for the kill.