On A Slippery Slope

By Michael Duffy/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, Sununu 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 Sununu 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 Sununu 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 Sununu 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.

With reporting by Dan Goodgame/Washington