Aspin Entourage Put Up at 5-Star Hotel : Cabinet: Defense chief and female friend paid for their accommodations in Venice, but aides traveled at taxpayer expense. Costs were unavoidable, he says.

Defense Secretary Les Aspin, who flew to Europe on official business in a government jet last week, spent four of the last seven days vacationing with a female friend at a five-star hotel in Venice. In the meantime, his jet sat on the tarmac and 31 members of his traveling party cooled their heels in Italy at taxpayer expense.

Aspin and his date paid for their own accommodations at the Danieli Hotel. But the government picked up the tab for the others, including nine who stayed with Aspin for five nights at the Danieli.

The hotel is listed in a Venice guidebook as one of the top six hotels in the city. Aspin’s spokesman, Vernon A. Guidry Jr., said that rooms for the Venice entourage apparently cost between $200 and $315 per night but that he did not have exact figures.

A clerk at the Danieli, a converted royal palace, said double rooms cost $417 to $459 a night while suites run up to about $700, the Associated Press reported.

The government also picked up food and lodging costs for the aircraft’s 22 crew members, who stayed in other hotels. Guidry said he did not have cost figures for the crew but would make them available after returning to Washington.

Aspin, speaking with reporters aboard his plane during the return flight Monday to Washington, said such costs were unavoidable given the requirements of his job for security and communication.

Aspin, to be sure, needed the vacation. He suffers from a heart condition, recently received a pacemaker implant and is under doctor’s orders to curb his workaholic ways.

“I would be just as happy to go by myself,” said Aspin, a Wisconsin Democrat and former chairman of the House Armed Services Committee. “I paid for the trip. . . . If I go to Wisconsin, this whole crowd goes with me.”

Aspin was accompanied in Venice by a Navy captain who serves as his military assistant, a military physician, a communication specialist and a six-member security detail. Aspin said he needed the communication specialist to hold secure conversations with top officials in Washington.

“I would say that of the four days of vacation, there were probably two hours a day on the phone,” Aspin said. “There were calls to (Joint Chiefs Chairman Gen. Colin L.) Powell, (National Security Adviser Anthony) Lake, to the staff back home.”

Aspin was joined in Venice by Sharon Sarton, a Wisconsin steel company executive and longtime friend. Aides traveling with the secretary were sensitive to the appearance of the trip and issued a news release pointing out that Sarton--identified only as a “non-governmental passenger”--was paying the $1,100 cost of the return flight to Washington on board Aspin’s jet.

Aspin left Washington a week ago Monday. His first stop was North Atlantic Treaty Organization headquarters in Brussels, where he spent a day and a half in meetings with European defense ministers before flying on to Aviano Air Base, Italy, on Wednesday.

After a brief tour of U.S. flight operations there, Aspin left by motorcade that night for Venice, where he remained through Monday morning. “He paid all his expenses from the water taxi (to Venice) on,” Guidry said.

Aspin then rejoined his traveling party and flew to Rome for a wreath-laying ceremony at the American cemetery near Anzio Beach. That was followed Monday by meetings with Italian defense officials and U.S. military commanders in the Mediterranean region. He left Rome for Washington Monday evening.