Fly Free Or Die

By Dan Goodgame/Washington

Most people who work at the White House treat an order from the President as holy writ. So everyone expected quick action when George Bush, embarrassed by news stories on the freeloading travels of chief of staff John Sununu, directed him to "get it all out" and make "full disclosure" of his expensive trips aboard Air Force executive jets to ski resorts in Colorado and to his home in New Hampshire.

Instead, Sununu stonewalled. At Bush's insistence, he issued a list of his White House travels, but it has proved to be incomplete, inaccurate and misleading. It conceals crucial information that TIME has obtained concerning at least four family skiing vacations and a fifth trip to his New Hampshire home that were financed by corporate interests -- in violation of federal ethics laws. Sununu declined requests for interviews about his travels, smugly assuring associates that if he simply hunkered down and said nothing more, "this whole thing will blow over." But Sununu's troubles are not going away just yet. President Bush, who had earlier tried to defuse the matter by suggesting that White House travel policies might need updating, last week reversed himself and authorized White House counsel Boyden Gray to investigate whether Sununu has violated existing travel and ethics rules.

The situation was clearly irritating to Bush, who at week's end suffered a heartbeat irregularity that is often associated with stress. Stricken with shortness of breath while jogging at Camp David, the President was rushed to Bethesda Naval Hospital, where initial tests showed no serious heart damage. The incident took the spotlight off the high-flying chief of staff -- but only momentarily.

Though junketing on government aircraft is a common practice among high Washington officials, including many members of Congress, it does not sit well with the public at a time of recession, rising taxes and budgetary belt tightening. Eyebrows were raised last week, for example, when CBS News reported that Vice President Dan Quayle and Transportation Secretary Samuel Skinner had taken an Air Force executive jet to Georgia for a golf weekend that cost taxpayers an estimated $27,000.

But Sununu's conduct raises questions that go far beyond the use of taxpayer-funded planes and invites a new twist on the New Hampshire motto: LIVE FREE OR DIE. Since he joined the Bush Administration, Sununu and his family have taken at least four ski trips and one trip home to New England that were financed in large part by corporate interests. Yet federal law forbids officials to accept valuable gifts, including travel and recreation, except from certain charitable and educational organizations. Items:

THE CHRISTA MCAULIFFE SABBATICAL FOUNDATION, named after the New Hampshire schoolteacher killed in the 1986 explosion of the space shuttle Challenger, raises money to give teachers time off to pursue further studies. The foundation, which was organized by Sununu in 1986, holds a four-day fund- raising ski event each February at the Waterville Valley Resort in New Hampshire. For the past three years, Sununu and unidentified members of his family have flown to the event on Air Force executive jets. The Sununus in 1989 flew up on Air Force Two with Vice President Quayle. In response to written questions submitted by TIME to the chief of staff, a Sununu aide explained that his boss paid no reimbursement to the government because he and his family were Quayle's "guests." In 1990 and 1991 Sununu took his own jet and deemed the ski weekends to be "official business" for himself; the government was reimbursed $845 in 1990 and $4,430 in 1991 for the equivalent of commercial coach airfares for his wife and children.

An aide to Sununu claimed that the McAuliffe Foundation paid for the family's airfare. But the organization's books, examined by TIME, show no such payment. Thomas Corcoran, president of the Waterville Valley Resort, told TIME he wrote checks for the airfare, lodging and expenses of the Sununu family and other "celebrity" skiers out of a separate account funded by corporate sponsors of the McAuliffe event. Among them: Coca-Cola, McDonald's and Siemens Nixdorf, the electronics firm that was awarded a $7 million computer contract by the state of New Hampshire while Sununu was Governor in 1988.

SKI MAGAZINE and its parent company, Times Mirror, invited Sununu to ski and speak at its three-day gathering in Aspen, Colo., in December 1990. As usual, Sununu classified this trip as official business and flew out on an Air Force jet. Ski magazine officials, however, say they paid for lodging, meals and ski passes for Sununu and his wife. As reported by TIME last week, Sununu's office billed a ski-industry lobbying group, the American Ski Federation, $802 for Nancy Sununu's airfare. A Sununu aide later explained that the payments by Ski and the Ski Federation were "billing errors" that would be corrected by having the White House reimburse these groups and transferring the bills to the SIA Ski Educational Foundation, an educational organization from which Sununu would normally be allowed to receive gifts of travel and recreation. Some Administration lawyers, however, question whether Sununu is allowed to accept a skiing-speaking invitation from a profitmaking corporation, Ski magazine, then cover for it by billing his expenses retroactively to an educational foundation.

THE EAGLE-TRIBUNE of Lawrence, Mass., located only 10 miles from Sununu's home in Salem, N.H., invited the chief of staff to speak at a newspaper banquet in June 1990. Sununu declared the trip to be official business and flew to Lawrence on an Air Force jet, accompanied by an undisclosed number of his family members. The newspaper, according to one of its editors, reimbursed the government $1,920 for the family's airfares.

Apart from the apparent impropriety of some of his travel arrangements, Sununu may be involved in a conflict of interest stemming from efforts to help a major ski developer. During his first Ski magazine weekend, in Vail, Colo., in 1989, Sununu was joined by an old political associate, Philip T. Gravink, who runs the Loon Mountain ski resort in New Hampshire's White Mountain National Forest. Gravink was a contributor to Sununu's political campaigns and let Sununu and his family ski for free when Sununu was Governor. At the time of the Vail event, Gravink had an application pending with the U.S. Forest Service and the Environmental Protection Agency to nearly double the size of his resort, and asked Sununu's counsel on how to speed the process. Sununu helped persuade Gravink that, as the developer later told the Manchester Union Leader, "our problem isn't environmental, it's political."

Upon his return from Vail, Gravink wrote a letter to Sununu at the White House, describing the expansion he wanted. Sununu passed the letter to the EPA and the Forest Service and followed up with what one well-informed Washington official described as "a lot of bullying and bluster" that "made clear what outcome the White House wanted in this case."

An aide to Sununu denied that any pressure was exerted on Gravink's behalf. Yet according to Ned Therrien, acting supervisor of the White Mountain National Forest, "Sununu has called several times and asked for updates on the progress" on Loon Mountain's application. Therrien emphasizes that Sununu only pressed for speedy action on the matter and did not specifically call for its approval. But Sununu's favorable view of the project is a matter of public record. "Well-done, environmentally safe growth should be allowed," Sununu said in a January 1990 interview with the Union Leader. He added that "from what I know," Loon Mountain's proposed expansion "falls into that category." It is mildly ironic that one of the founders of the Loon Mountain resort is Sununu's political idol, Sherman Adams, Dwight Eisenhower's former special assistant, who was forced to resign that position in 1958 because he accepted a vicuna coat and other gifts from a Boston industrialist.

The controversy that continues to swirl around the chief of staff presents his boss with a dilemma. Sununu has been extremely useful to Bush as a lightning rod, absorbing political heat that might otherwise burn a popular President. Now Sununu is generating the heat and turning into a potential liability. Aides say that Bush, while annoyed at Sununu's excesses, continues to value his services. The President, they say, hopes that Gray's investigation will allow Sununu to "correct" his travel reimbursements and put the matter behind him. But that can only happen if Sununu stops stonewalling and explains, fully and publicly, the details of these junkets and the interests that bankrolled them.

With reporting by Michael Duffy/Washington and Rod Paul/Concord