Gentlemen Prefer Military Jets

By Janice Castro

SOME HABITS ARE HARD TO BREAK. SENATORS CLAIBORNE PELL and DAVID BOREN, the chairmen of the Foreign Relations and Intelligence committees, have been traveling through Southeast Asia during the Easter-Passover recess on a military C-20B (cost: $2,614 an hour), stopping in Hong Kong, Taiwan, Indonesia and Papua New Guinea (to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the Battle of the Coral Sea). Even though commercial flights were available, sources say, one of the reasons for going military was that wives travel free. Boren argues that the spouses were invited by some of the governments to participate in events. Says he: "Surely we do not want to get to the point where we hinder the chairmen of two of the three committees that have oversight of international relations and national security from being able to do their jobs."