Sununu Solicited Jet Ride Himself, Official Says

Ignoring the advice of President Bush’s counsel, White House Chief of Staff John H. Sununu personally solicited the use of a corporate jet for political travel after three proposed aircraft donors were rejected because of potential conflicts of interest, a senior White House official said Friday night.

Sununu’s efforts to obtain use of the privately owned aircraft, coupled with his erroneous identification of the donor, prompted White House Counsel C. Boyden Gray on Friday to revise the procedures used to screen the chief of staff’s travel requests, the senior official said.

The disclosures were made as a growing number of top Bush Administration officials, including Gray, Vice President Dan Quayle and Commerce Secretary Robert A. Mosbacher, are becoming increasingly embittered by the controversy surrounding Sununu, according to Administration officials and other sources.

As a result of the new disclosures involving aircraft use, the senior White House official said, Sununu “has been advised not to solicit any aircraft in the future.” The official said Bush had been informed of the effort to establish “a better screening process.”

The White House official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the latest development occurred when Gray and other White House officials discovered that the chief of staff had “called an old friend, Stuart Bernstein . . . and asked if he had an airplane he could use.”

The plane, which Bernstein agreed to provide, carried Sununu to Chicago, where he spoke at a fund-raising event of the Republican Governors Assn., for which Sununu’s wife works. Bernstein is a Washington real estate developer.

Sununu made the request on June 10, the day before the speech, after Gray had turned down requests to use planes offered by Archer Daniels Midland, an agribusiness firm whose activities are heavily regulated by the federal government, and by two other companies, Textron and Ameritech, because their ties to the government also raised questions of potential conflicts of interest, the official said.

The official said that Bernstein told Sununu he no longer owned an airplane but that three business associates, Howard Bender, Morton Bender and John Mason, did.

“Mr. Bernstein chartered the plane from them and made it available for Sununu to travel to Chicago,” the official said, adding that Bernstein, Mrs. Sununu and Edward M. Rogers, a Sununu aide, traveled with the chief of staff to Chicago.

Sununu then reported to Gray that the plane was being provided by the Benders, who are brothers, and Mason, rather than telling him it was Bernstein who was donating the aircraft, the official said. Howard Bender is a key figure in Blake Construction Co., which has built major government facilities in the Washington area and leases property to the government.

“Sununu and Rogers say they did not know Bernstein was the donor who paid for the airplane,” the White House official said.

Although no government regulation prohibits the chief of staff from soliciting the donation of private aircraft for his personal use, procedures set up on May 9 by Gray to govern Sununu’s travel advised him against doing so.

Those procedures were established to screen Sununu’s travel arrangements after it was disclosed that he had repeatedly used Air Force jets for personal and political travel, as well as for official trips, arguing that he needed the aircraft to remain in secure communication with Washington at all times.

“Boyden’s problem is that it would have been better if Sununu had not done it himself, and he should have known who the real donor was,” the official said.

Under the new policy, the White House Office of Administration, which comes under Sununu’s purview, will handle the paperwork of his travel requests, in an effort “to try to close some of the loopholes,” another White House official said.

“What they’re trying to do is just tighten it up so this will not happen again,” the official added.

Gray was described by White House insiders as being “annoyed and irritated” at Sununu because of the erroneous identification. And other top Administration officials, including Quayle and Mosbacher, were said to be distressed that their own travel is being subjected to increased scrutiny as a result of Sununu’s travel practices.

“It never would have come about if it weren’t for Sununu,” said one White House official, speaking on condition of anonymity. At a White House meeting Thursday evening, he said, “frustration was being vented by everyone over the whole thing.”

“The essential problem,” a senior White House aide said, is that “Sununu’s created a lot of trouble for people.”

The anger, which is emanating from the White House as well as several Cabinet departments, illustrates the most immediate impact of the travel flap: Although Sununu’s immediate tenure does not appear at risk, barring new developments, the affair has undermined the harmonious functioning of a White House that prides itself on avoiding the backbiting that prevailed in the Ronald Reagan Administration.

The risk, said one Republican with ties to the Administration, “is a White House that won’t be able to function very well, with people looking over their shoulders all the time.”

Within the White House, he said, those in Sununu’s office have for the most part “isolated themselves so they’re in one camp, and everybody else is in the other.”

Even within Sununu’s office, one White House official said, there is dissension.

The chief of staff’s deputy, Andrew J. Card, has maintained good relations with others in the White House, the official said, but “everyone knows he’s not real happy with the way things are.”

Gray, the White House counsel, and other senior officials “are just fed up with it--with the whole situation,” said the official, speaking on the condition of anonymity.

Gray was assigned by the President to review Sununu’s travel plans, to determine whether his use of Air Force jets for official travel is justified and whether his use of corporate aircraft would pose a conflict of interest.

The review process was established on May 9, after disclosures that Sununu had used the military aircraft for political and personal travel--including a flight to Boston to visit his dentist and another to Colorado on a ski trip--as well as for official trips. A week ago, it was disclosed that Sununu used a government automobile and driver to attend a stamp auction in New York.

Sununu has said that the use of the planes and the car, which are equipped with telephones and, in the case of the aircraft, secure communications facilities, was required so he could stay in constant contact with Washington.