Sununu Defends Use of Federal Car, Business Jet

Presidential Chief of Staff John H. Sununu, declaring that his post is “a seven-day-a-week, 24-hour-a-day job,” Sunday defended using a White House limousine to go to a rare-stamp auction in New York last week.

Sununu, in a television interview, acknowledged dismissing the chauffeur and then returning to Washington aboard a corporate jet, but stressed that he was able to remain reachable by his office both in the car and in the air.

“I’m going to continue to utilize the tools that are necessary for me to meet my responsibility to the President of the United States,” Sununu said on ABC’s “This Week With David Brinkley.”

“Contrary to the tone of the reporting on my travel, that responsibility is there, and it is not only a critical part of my being able to do that, but it is in the national interest,” President Bush’s top aide said.

Questions about the one-day trip last Wednesday, initially reported by Newsweek magazine, touch again on two kinds of legal perks that are favored by Bush Administration officials but have become increasingly controversial--leisure trips taken in government planes and cars and corporate-provided travel.

Last month, White House counsel C. Boyden Gray found that Sununu had violated Administration policy governing the use of military aircraft several times and required him to reimburse the government several hundred dollars for improper charges. At the same time, Bush issued a new travel policy that requires Sununu to receive Gray’s permission before using military aircraft.

Sununu said Gray had approved his returning to Washington on the corporate jet--the ownership of which was not revealed--and that the senior White House lawyer also found his limousine ride to New York to have been “proper and appropriate.”

Because of the around-the-clock nature of his job, Sununu said he has a “door-to-door car and driver assigned to me. I have to be able to communicate, to work on sensitive papers, to coordinate the White House activities, even while I’m traveling.”

On the Wednesday trip, the chief of staff said he “was on the phone constantly to Cabinet members, House and Senate members, White House staff, National Security Adviser Brent Scowcroft.”

He said he was “dealing with issues that needed an immediate response or some kind of an immediate involvement. That is a real part of my job.”

“It has been clearly a proper way of doing it, and even while involved in other activities, I constantly have to go and communicate back to the White House every 10 or l5 minutes to make sure what’s going on,” Sununu said.