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POLITICS & COMMUNITY Department of Energy Crisis by Steven Mencher	Nobody would have picked Hazel O'Leary to be the star of the Clinton White House. But she was, if only briefly. She didn't exactly have her picture on the cover of "Rolling Stone." But a warm and fuzzy, glowingly positive portrait there in March, 1994, signalled her presence as a major player to those who hadn't been paying attention. And as her profile was raised, she naturally became a target of those looking to make Clinton a one-termer. Aside from her visible stand on declassification of documents about human nuclear experimentation, she also: put in place management reforms aimed at saving millions of dollars on DOE's number one job-- clean-up at America's nuclear waste facilities publicly urged the President to suspend all nuclear testing led a top to bottom evaluation of the nation's science laboratories took the lead in international efforts on nuclear safety and non- proliferation O'Leary was an unexpected, largely unknown choice to be the seventh Secretary of Energy, but she had already put in time in Washington at the Federal Energy Administration in the early 70s, and then at the Energy Department during the Carter Administration. She came back to Washington from a giant Minneapolis energy company called Northern States Power, where she was an executive vice president, and headed the company's natural gas subsidiary.
You might think that she and Joe Barton would have plenty to talk about if they could sit down and chat.	Looking at her background in natural gas, nuclear power, and the private sector you might think that she and Joe Barton would have plenty to talk about if they could sit down and chat. But with Barton out to crush the Secretary, Washington rules demand that she return the favor. The Republicans found a chink in O'Leary's armor last year when "The Wall Street Journal" revealed that she had allowed a contractor for the DOE to compile, if not an "enemies list," at least a ranking of reporters as to the friendliness of their spins. This put her on a collision course with much of the media, and resulted in "The New York Times" calling for her head. Her claims not to have seen the reports in question seemed beside the point. Then "The Los Angeles Times" broke the story that large delegations from the DOE and American energy companies had travelled abroad, twice using an airplane that Madonna had once chartered, in search of business for American companies. Was this a Sununu-style scandal, or was the Secretary simply doing what Congress and the President had asked her to do?
O'Leary's job hung in the balance more than once.	O'Leary's job hung in the balance more than once. But she never gave an inch. According to one story, she phoned a Congressman as he stepped off the floor after bashing her, and told him to cut it out-- not for her sake, but because he was riling up her mom. She then reported that travel and public relations had nothing to do with the member's complaints-- that he had in fact admitted to her that he was carrying water for the military, who objected to her policies on nuclear weapons. O'Leary is proud that she doesn't fit the Washington mold. Defending herself on a day she was too sick to come into the office, she received a Washington Post reporter at home in her nightgown-- an encounter he gleefully reported the next morning. It was hoped by Democrats that the crash of Commerce Secretary Ron Brown's plane in the former Yugoslavia would take the heat off O'Leary. He was, after all, on the same kind of trade mission that O'Leary had led. As the President declared him a hero, it was hoped that some of the luster would rub off onto O'Leary. But was it enough? Only this week will tell.