Secretary Of Energy’s Overseas Trips, Spending Spark Criticism House Committees, Gao Investigating O’Leary’s Department Records

The United States has had globe-trotting presidents and secretaries of state, but never a globe-trotting energy secretary. Until now.

In her three years running an agency traditionally preoccupied with the nation’s domestic energy programs, Hazel O’Leary has begun to distinguish herself for her ventures abroad - and for the sheer scale of them.

Most heads of Cabinet departments such as Energy spend their time in Washington and on periodic trips to field operations around the country. But even as her department faces substantial budget cuts and layoffs at home, O’Leary has set her sights on more distant horizons.

She has taken 16 trips to destinations ranging from India to Russia and through the capitals of Europe - and spent a total of 130 days overseas. Her international travel far exceeds any of her domestic Cabinet colleagues’, and represents more than half the time that Secretary of State Warren Christopher has logged conducting U.S. foreign policy.

And where O’Leary goes, she goes in style - and with lots of company.

On a weeklong visit to South Africa in August, O’Leary took along 51 department employees, plus an entourage of 68 business executives, academics and others. They flew on a luxury jet occasionally used by Madonna. Photographers and video camera crews were hired to follow along and shoot the highlights. The cost to taxpayers: $560,000.

This is a portrait of a public official working hard, advancing a sweeping policy portfolio, according to O’Leary. Her department “has a broad mandate, and from its inception has had responsibility for representing the United States government internationally,” she said in an interview.

However, the prodigious travels, reflected in expense records obtained by the Los Angeles Times, are an example of a management style that is attracting attention on Capitol Hill and elsewhere in Washington. She has been criticized already by members of Congress for her department’s hiring of a private firm to track and rate how different news reporters were covering her agency.

But even inside her own department, O’Leary’s largess has some officials wondering. Energy has a sizable internal public relations shop supplemented by more than $50,000 annually in outside contracts for monitoring O’Leary’s public profile and energy issue coverage.

It also has added a costly new position - “departmental conflict resolution ombudsman.” The job went to a Newark, N.J., school worker who was a longtime friend of O’Leary’s. The woman receives $93,166 a year plus a generous living allowance.

O’Leary was a Minnesota utilities company executive and affluent in her own right when she was appointed by President Clinton in 1993 to head the relatively low-profile agency. Increasingly, some are wondering whether, even after three years in office and despite previous government experience, she has fully made the transition from the four-star perquisites of the corporate executive suite to the more modest limits of the public payroll.

Sen. Harry Reid, D-Nev., goes further. “She is only interested in self-aggrandizement,” he said. “She’s compromised the entire department for personal gain and ego.”

O’Leary, a proud and tenacious defender of her record, bristles at such talk.

“That’s so patently silly,” she said in an interview Friday. “Anyone who knows me well, knows I am without personal ego. … I see a leader of an organization representing the substantive work of the organization.”

O’Leary and aides describe her foreign travel as vital and back-breaking work that advances U.S. interests, including promoting nuclear nonproliferation, safeguarding nuclear materials in the former Soviet Union and expanding American business opportunities. They also maintain that the department has a broad international mandate and that O’Leary has never gone overseas without a White House request or a foreign invitation - and that she turns down most that she receives.

Indeed, energy secretaries have also traveled abroad. But not this often, or in this manner.

Several House committees and the General Accounting Office, an investigative arm of Congress, are now examining the secretary’s records. Republican lawmakers who want to dismantle the Energy Department are citing O’Leary’s activities to bolster their case.

O’Leary strongly insists her overseas “trade missions” to India, Pakistan, China and South Africa paid off richly.

Last month, she told a House hearing that in India alone, “U.S. businesses have signed the contracts for over $10 billion worth of energy services or manufacturing in the times that I have been there.” The department also has cited a total figure of $19.7 billion in business generated.

This month, Energy officials revised that significantly downward: For all four missions together, the total figure for projects reaching “final closure or announced sales” was more like $1.4 billion.

Another department trip to China also stands out. Unrelated to energy at all, the occasion was the U.N. Fourth World Conference on Women. O’Leary did not attend, but Energy sent a contingent of six, costing $39,000.

The justification for some of O’Leary’s international travel is not disputed, although the frequency, length and entourage are.

She has traveled five times to Vienna and Paris to attend meetings of the International Atomic Energy Agency and the International Energy Agency. She also visited Russia four times for meetings held under a bilateral U.S.-Russian commission.

In a recent appearance before Congress, O’Leary defined the Energy Department’s main missions as managing and dismantling the nation’s nuclear weapons stockpile, cleaning up nuclear manufacturing sites and encouraging research. The department’s facilities are in the United States - more than 100 sites in 35 states. The department also manages 27 national laboratories.

In her congressional testimony, the secretary boasted that the department was ahead of schedule in adjusting to the new budget constraints. It has cut its work force by nearly 800 to 19,399 and reduced its contract employees. And in her own accounts, O’Leary has reimbursed the government $8,700 for disallowed airfare upgrades and $450 in dry-cleaning bills for herself and aides - expense mistakes she attributed to staff or accounting system errors.

But critics eye the huge public relations machine in her department and suggest she is still spending frivolously.

Energy has a public affairs staff of 51 in Washington and about 74 in satellite offices - proportionately more than other comparable Cabinet departments. There also are about 14 employees assigned to handle O’Leary’s invitations, travel and meeting preparation. The department has two other contracts with private companies to track media stories about the agency and energy.

Senior officials emphasize that the public relations employees have a wide range of important responsibilities, including responding to public inquiries about sensitive nuclear issues.