TIME: Almanac 1993/TIME Almanac 1993.iso/time/050691/0506101.000

Text File | 1992-08-28 | 5.2 KB | 133 lines

                                                                                NATION, Page 22

Who Stabbed Sununu?


When a man makes this many enemies, almost everyone in Washington
has a motive for trying to topple him

By DAN GOODGAME/WASHINGTON -- With reporting by Michael Duffy/
Washington


    There were no tears for John Sununu last week. Not in
Washington, not in his home state of New Hampshire -- least of
all at the White House, whose staff he has terrorized with
personal insults and paranoid suspicions over the past two
years. "This is the time when you expect 40 people to stand up
and say, `I know John Sununu, and he would never violate the
public trust.' But you don't hear that, do you?" asked a senior
administration official. "That's because John has violated one
of the first rules of politics: Don't make enemies you don't
need to make."

    So many enemies has Sununu collected that Washington's
favorite guessing game last week was which one stabbed the chief
of staff in the back by leaking details of his travels. The
answer seems to be that initial inquiries into Sununu's flights
were not suggested by leaks, but once reporters started asking
questions, plenty of eager tipsters emerged.

    The Washington Post began investigating Sununu months ago,
prompted in part by signs that his family (which includes eight
children, two still residing at home) was living at the edge of
its means yet managed to take regular skiing trips to Colorado
and New Hampshire. Reporters at the Post, whose lead was
followed by U.S. News & World Report, insist they got their
scoop by observing that Sununu was an unusually frequent
traveler and by demanding his records from the Pentagon. But
once Sununu's detractors got wind of the investigation, says a
Post staffer, "they called to cheer us on" -- and to provide
more details.

    After the first stories broke, officials unfriendly to
Sununu quietly pushed a second, more damaging wave of
allegations: Sununu not only made excessive use of Air Force
planes, but when he traveled to ski resorts to give speeches,
he sometimes also accepted free lodging, lift tickets and
airfare for his wife. Such charges embarrassed the
ethics-sensitive Bush Administration, while providing a tempting
target for Sununu's many enemies. They include:

    New Hampshire Republicans. At least initially, Sununu
suspected he had been knifed by Chuck Douglas, a Concord
Republican whom Sununu and his wife Nancy, now a G.O.P.
operative in Washington, personally dislike and worked hard to
defeat in his bid for re-election to Congress last year.
Republican Governor Judd Gregg also loathes Sununu and blames
him for leaving behind a major budget deficit. "It may come as
a surprise to people in Washington," says one of Sununu's
friends in New Hampshire, "but John has as many enemies here as
there."

    The Budget Boys. During last fall's deficit-reduction
talks, Sununu's high-handed style greatly offended the old bulls
of Congress. The last straw for Senator Robert Byrd, the
powerful West Virginia Democrat, came when Sununu plopped his
feet onto the conference table and read newspapers while the
others negotiated. "Your conduct is arrogant," Byrd thundered.
"It is rude." And he vowed that Su nunu would live to regret it.

    Capitol Hill Republicans. Sununu's relations with G.O.P.
lawmakers are, if anything, worse than his relations with
Democrats. Sununu publicly dismissed Senator Trent Lott, a loyal
Mississippi Republican, as "insignificant," prompting dozens of
lawmakers to wear buttons reading I'M INSIGNIFICANT, TOO. Sununu
threatened to campaign against Republicans who voted against the
unpopular budget agreement that he helped negotiate. He blocked
Housing Secretary Jack Kemp from hiring one such defector, John
Hiler of Indiana, who had failed to win re-election last
November. And Sununu will never outlive the enmity of Senate
minority leader Robert Dole, whom he smeared as a tax enthusiast
during the 1988 New Hampshire primary.

    The White House Staff. When Su nunu first took office, he
cut salaries across the board, from senior staff to steno pool,
boasting that he could find plenty of people to work for the
President for $25,000 a year. Meanwhile, Sununu's own pay
jumped from $99,500 to $124,400 in 1990. He has also alienated
senior staffers, who call him the "fat little pirate" behind his
back, by humiliating them in front of their peers.

    It did not help that Sununu went out of his way to
antagonize the press. He has repeatedly spewed ad hominem
attacks on reporters, calling them "incompetents" and worse.
During a 1989 investigation of his finances by the Post, Sununu
bragged to associates that he had bullied Katharine Graham, the
paper's chairman, into killing the piece. But the story later
ran, and the Post kept digging -- soon joined by virtually every
news organization in the capital. Now that he is seen to be
vulnerable, Sununu can expect further press scrutiny of his
finances -- and of everything he does -- in the weeks ahead. And
reporters will find plenty of sources only too happy to help.