O'Leary received the James Madison Award from the American Society of Access Professionals for her Openness Initiative declassifying millions of energy documents.
On March 16, 1994, Hazel R. O'Leary was honored with the James Madison Award by the American Society of Access Professionals in recognition of her groundbreaking Openness Initiative at the Department of Energy. This award is named after President James Madison, a strong advocate for government transparency and the free flow of information to citizens.
The award recognized O'Leary's leadership in declassifying millions of pages of documents related to Cold War-era nuclear weapons testing, radiation experiments, and other historically secretive government activities. Under her direction, the Department of Energy underwent an unprecedented cultural shift from one of the most closed federal agencies to one actively promoting public access to previously classified information.
This recognition validated O'Leary's controversial but ultimately celebrated approach to governance, which prioritized public accountability over institutional secrecy — a stance that was not universally popular within the national security establishment but was widely praised by transparency advocates, historians, and victims' rights groups.
The James Madison Award remains one of the most prestigious honors in the field of government transparency and freedom of information advocacy, and O'Leary's receipt of it cemented her legacy as a transformative figure in American governmental openness.