Top Bush Aides Reportedly Angry Over Sununu Flap : White House: Gray said to be ‘irritated’ over chief of staff’s erroneous travel data. Quayle, Mosbacher upset by added scrutiny, sources say.

Top Bush Administration officials, including Vice President Dan Quayle, White House Counsel C. Boyden Gray and Commerce Secretary Robert A. Mosbacher, have become increasingly embittered by Chief of Staff John H. Sununu’s controversial travel habits, sources said Friday.

Gray, who serves as President Bush’s attorney, was described by White House insiders as being “annoyed and irritated” with the White House chief of staff after his office provided erroneous information about one of Sununu’s flights aboard a corporate airplane.

Others, including Quayle and Mosbacher, have faced embarrassment as their own travel is subjected to increased scrutiny as a result of Sununu’s use of Air Force jets, government automobiles and corporate aircraft.

“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,” said a senior White House aide, 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 has been 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 to determine 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 that he could stay in constant contact with Washington.

On Wednesday, the White House made available a list of five flights that Sununu took aboard different corporate aircraft, noting that Gray had approved each trip in advance. However, the list misidentified the provider of one of the planes.

The White House said the aircraft was made available by Howard Bender, whose firm, Blake Construction Co., is a leading builder of government offices. But a Republican Party official told The Times that the plane had been leased from Bender by Stuart Bernstein, another Washington real estate figure, who, in turn, provided it to Sununu.

Based on the erroneous information, Gray, who in the past has allied himself with Sununu on policy issues that divided the White House staff, had approved a flight Sununu made to Chicago on June 11 to attend a fund-raising event for the Republican Governors Assn., for which Sununu’s wife, Nancy, works.

“It’s hard for him (Gray) to look good, having cleared one person and finding out later it was somebody else” who provided the airplane, said one senior White House official, speaking privately. “It’s creating suspicion between the offices.”

For Sununu, the immediate problem is to halt the increasingly public criticism he is facing--a difficult job after having angered key figures throughout Washington dozens of times over the last 2 1/2 years with his often abrasive manner.

But each time the matter seems about to fade from public scrutiny, a new development comes to light. “He keeps picking the scab off,” the senior official said.