TRAVEL ALARM

IN DEFENDING HER AGENCY AGAINST G.O.P. budget cutters, Energy Secretary Hazel O'Leary has been an effective warrior. Defending her reputation, however, is becoming problematic. Her congressional critics, who plan to hold another round of hearings next month, may well discover new items to view with alarm. An investigation by the General Accounting Office has found that $255,000 worth of the expenses that O'Leary's delegations billed for trips to India and South Africa have no receipts or records to justify how the money was spent. Energy officials are searching for the records and tightening up accounting procedures. Critics inside the department point to other expenditures that stem from O'Leary's zeal for burnishing the agency's image. Last year, Energy Department officials told TIME, the agency spent $10,182 drawing up trendier designs for its logo. O'Leary abandoned the idea after aides learned that it would cost $1.7 million for new logos on all the flags, seals and stationery.

When O'Leary first took over, she shook up the organization, cutting 51,000 of its 169,000 employees and contractors. She also made public the agency's records on radiation tests performed on unwitting patients during the cold war. But in other ways she has had a blind spot. First she had to appear before a congressional hearing to explain why her department paid $46,500 to a media consultant who tracked and rated journalists on the energy beat. Then came reports that she had spent millions of dollars on trade missions with retinues worthy of a head of state. On a week's mission to South Africa last August, O'Leary took along 51 aides and 68 business executives at a cost of $560,000.

O'Leary defends the foreign travel as a way to stimulate business for U.S. energy companies. She contends that her G.O.P. critics are motivated by their failure to shut down her department: "If you can't attack us on substance, you attack the leader." So far, the White House has supported O'Leary, but senior officials predict that more bad headlines could cost her the job.