O’Leary’s Ouster Demanded After Questionable Spending Energy Chief Used $43,000 In Tax Dollars To Rank Reporters

The Clinton administration is investigating why Energy Secretary Hazel O’Leary spent $43,000 in taxpayer funds to hire a consulting firm to rank news reporters covering her agency.

White House officials played down the likelihood that O’Leary would be summarily fired, although there were widespread demands in Congress for her immediate resignation.

But the White House did not rule out the possibility that the long-controversial secretary would soon be out of a job. “On the face of it … it is simply unacceptable,” said White House spokesman Mike McCurry.

White House Chief of Staff Leon Panetta asked O’Leary to provide a “full report” on the incident. He said he would give O’Leary the opportunity to submit the report explaining the incident “before making any further decisions.”

O’Leary, traveling in Louisiana, was scheduled to discuss the matter in a telephone conference call with the news media, but she abruptly bailed out at the last minute and left reporters on the telephone listening to a television game show.

O’Leary, wary of unflattering reporting about the Energy Department and her own performance, hired the Washington-based consulting firm Carma International last year to examine hundreds of newspaper stories and rank the favorability of reporters’ coverage toward the department on a scale of 1 to 100.

Carma provided monthly reports full of graphics, charts and written analyses. Among the news organizations found to be the least favorable to the department was The Associated Press, whose dispatches go to hundreds of newspapers around the country.

The reports also evaluated sources used by journalists to comment on the Energy Department. Sources typically critical of the department included Senate Majority Leader Bob Dole, R-Kan., the government of Russia and various environmental organizations.

The Carma reports were disclosed in a story by the Wall Street Journal, in which Jerry Taylor of the Cato Institute, a Washington think tank, characterized O’Leary’s actions as “a little bit of Nixon,” a reference to the former president’s enemies list.

But a senior Energy Department official defended the reports, saying they were never used to exclude reporters and were part of a broader effort by the agency to improve how it measured good performance.

O’Leary’s tenure as energy secretary has been controversial from the beginning. Defense Department officials have been harshly critical of her performance in managing the nuclear weapons complex, and the commercial nuclear energy industry has charged that she panders to anti-nuclear critics.

Earlier this year, O’Leary was stung by disclosures that she spent taxpayer funds lavishly on first-class hotels and air travel, involving frequent trips around the nation and around the world.

The flap over the Carma International expenditures appeared to be the most serious yet. About three dozen members of the House signed a letter calling for O’Leary to step down immediately.

“This is the straw that broke the camel’s back,” Rep. Steve Chabot, R-Ohio, said in an interview. “This is very disturbing. The president should clearly fire her.”

Sen. Richard Bryan, D-Nev., said in a Senate speech that O’Leary should personally reimburse the government for the cost of the survey, calling it “truly outrageous.”

Carma International President Albert Barr strong defended the propriety of his company’s reports, saying the company never probed into the private lives of reporters but merely analyzed reporters’ stories.