O’Leary Calls for a Review of Her Practices

Energy Secretary Hazel O’Leary called Saturday for an independent review of her management practices, including her extensive foreign travel and the hiring of a longtime friend for a newly created job.

In a statement, O’Leary said she had asked the Energy Department’s inspector general to conduct the inquiry in response to today’s article in The Times.

“I am concerned that the issues raised in the article, if left unreviewed, will raise questions about the value to the American people of the important contributions of the Department of Energy,” O’Leary said in the statement.

“Therefore, I have requested that our inspector general conduct an independent determination of the facts on which the article is based and an assessment of the management practices of the office of the secretary of Energy which relate to these issues.”

In the statement, O’Leary defended costly foreign trade missions that she has led as having “paid dividends that the taxpayer can support.” She said that these trips had advanced “the economic, energy, environmental and national security of our nation.”

In addition, she defended the hiring of a longtime friend in the job of ombudsman. She said that the position was needed “because of the department’s past history of secrecy and abuse” and that her friend of 34 years, E. Shirley Thomas, “is a certified ombudsman, a board member of the Ombudsman Assn. and has served effectively in that role.”

In an interview Friday, O’Leary said that she had repaid the government more than $9,000 in travel expenses as a result of audits undertaken in response to questions from The Times and others. She said that only recently did she learn that her upgrades for business and first-class flights and other bills had been approved by subordinates in violation of federal guidelines.

“The system with respect to audit and control here is extremely unreliable,” O’Leary said. “I mean, it’s broken.”

Consequently, she said, she had instituted new procedures, including triple auditing of the secretary’s travel, new travel authorization procedures, additional training of the travel staff and spot audits.