Who Stabbed Sununu?

By Dan Goodgame/Washington

There were no tears for John Sununu last week. Not in Washington, not in his home state of New Hampshire -- least of all at the White House, whose staff he has terrorized with personal insults and paranoid suspicions over the past two years. "This is the time when you expect 40 people to stand up and say, 'I know John Sununu, and he would never violate the public trust.' But you don't hear that, do you?" asked a senior administration official. "That's because John has violated one of the first rules of politics: Don't make enemies you don't need to make."

So many enemies has Sununu collected that Washington's favorite guessing game last week was which one stabbed the chief of staff in the back by leaking details of his travels. The answer seems to be that initial inquiries into Sununu's flights were not suggested by leaks, but once reporters started asking questions, plenty of eager tipsters emerged.

The Washington Post began investigating Sununu months ago, prompted in part by signs that his family (which includes eight children, two still residing at home) was living at the edge of its means yet managed to take regular skiing trips to Colorado and New Hampshire. Reporters at the Post, whose lead was followed by U.S. News & World Report, insist they got their scoop by observing that Sununu was an unusually frequent traveler and by demanding his records from the Pentagon. But once Sununu's detractors got wind of the investigation, says a Post staffer, "they called to cheer us on" -- and to provide more details.

After the first stories broke, officials unfriendly to Sununu quietly pushed a second, more damaging wave of allegations: Sununu not only made excessive use of Air Force planes, but when he traveled to ski resorts to give speeches, he sometimes also accepted free lodging, lift tickets and airfare for his wife. Such charges embarrassed the ethics-sensitive Bush Administration, while + providing a tempting target for Sununu's many enemies. They include:

New Hampshire Republicans. At least initially, Sununu suspected he had been knifed by Chuck Douglas, a Concord Republican whom Sununu and his wife Nancy, now a G.O.P. operative in Washington, personally dislike and worked hard to defeat in his bid for re-election to Congress last year. Republican Governor Judd Gregg also loathes Sununu and blames him for leaving behind a major budget deficit. "It may come as a surprise to people in Washington," says one of Sununu's friends in New Hampshire, "but John has as many enemies here as there."

The Budget Boys. During last fall's deficit-reduction talks, Sununu's high- handed style greatly offended the old bulls of Congress. The last straw for Senator Robert Byrd, the powerful West Virginia Democrat, came when Sununu plopped his feet onto the conference table and read newspapers while the others negotiated. "Your conduct is arrogant," Byrd thundered. "It is rude." And he vowed that Sununu would live to regret it.

Capitol Hill Republicans. Sununu's relations with G.O.P. lawmakers are, if anything, worse than his relations with Democrats. Sununu publicly dismissed Senator Trent Lott, a loyal Mississippi Republican, as "insignificant," prompting dozens of lawmakers to wear buttons reading I'M INSIGNIFICANT, TOO. Sununu threatened to campaign against Republicans who voted against the unpopular budget agreement that he helped negotiate. He blocked Housing Secretary Jack Kemp from hiring one such defector, John Hiler of Indiana, who had failed to win re-election last November. And Sununu will never outlive the enmity of Senate minority leader Robert Dole, whom he smeared as a tax enthusiast during the 1988 New Hampshire primary.

The White House Staff. When Sununu first took office, he cut salaries across the board, from senior staff to steno pool, boasting that he could find plenty of people to work for the President for $25,000 a year. Meanwhile, Sununu's own pay jumped from $99,500 to $124,400 in 1990. He has also alienated senior staffers, who call him the "fat little pirate" behind his back, by humiliating them in front of their peers.

It did not help that Sununu went out of his way to antagonize the press. He has repeatedly spewed ad hominem attacks on reporters, calling them "incompetents" and worse. During a 1989 investigation of his finances by the Post, Sununu bragged to associates that he had bullied Katharine Graham, , the paper's chairman, into killing the piece. But the story later ran, and the Post kept digging -- soon joined by virtually every news organization in the capital. Now that he is seen to be vulnerable, Sununu can expect further press scrutiny of his finances -- and of everything he does -- in the weeks ahead. And reporters will find plenty of sources only too happy to help.

With reporting by Michael Duffy/Washington