The Internal Revenue Service's scrutiny of conservative groups went beyond those with "tea party" or "patriot" in their names—as the agency admitted Friday—to also include ones worried about government spending, debt or taxes, and even ones that lobbied to "make America a better place to live," according to new details of a government probe. 
 
 The investigation into the IRS's targeting of conservative groups has revealed that high-ranking IRS officials knew as early as 2011 of the practice. John McKinnon reports. 
 
 The investigation also revealed that a high-ranking IRS official knew as early as mid-2011 that conservative groups were being inappropriately targeted—nearly a year before then-IRS Commissioner Douglas Shulman told a congressional committee the agency wasn't targeting conservative groups. 
 
 Enlarge Image Close Associated Press Tax-exempt groups organized under section 501(c)(4) of the Internal Revenue Code are allowed to engage in some political activity, but the primary focus of their efforts must remain promoting social welfare. 
 
 The new disclosures are likely to inflame a widening controversy over IRS handling of dozens of applications by tea-party, patriot and other conservative groups for tax-exempt status. 
 
 The details emerged from disclosures to congressional investigators by the Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration. The findings, which were reviewed by The Wall Street Journal, don't make clear who came up with the idea to give extra scrutiny to the conservative groups. 
 
 The Internal Revenue Service inappropriately flagged conservative political groups for additional reviews during the 2012 election to see if they were violating their tax exempt status. John McKinnon reports on the News Hub. 
 
 The inspector general's office has been conducting an audit of the IRS's handling of the applications process and is expected to release a report this week. The audit follows complaints last year by numerous tea-party and other conservative groups that they had been singled out and subjected to excessive and inappropriate questioning. Many groups say they were asked for lists of their donors and other sensitive information. 
 
 On Sunday, a government official said the report will note that IRS officials told investigators that no one outside the IRS was involved in developing the criteria the agency now acknowledges were flawed. 
 
 On Friday, Lois Lerner, head of the IRS tax-exempt-organizations division, said the agency was "apologetic" for what she termed "absolutely inappropriate" actions by lower-level workers. She said those workers had selected some conservative groups for extra scrutiny to determine whether their applications should be approved. She said they had picked groups for extra scrutiny according to whether they had "tea party" or "patriot" in their names, among other criteria. 
 
 Ms. Lerner came to the IRS in 2001 from the Federal Election Commission, and assumed her current position in 2006. IRS officials said Sunday that Ms. Lerner wasn't available for comment, and she didn't respond to an emailed request. 
 
 GOP lawmakers stepped up their criticism on Sunday. "The bottom line is [IRS officials] used key words to go after conservatives," Rep. Darrell Issa (R., Calif.), said Sunday on NBC's "Meet the Press." "There has to be accountability for the people who did it. And, quite frankly…there's got to be accountability for people who were telling lies about it being done." 
 
 Some Democrats also voiced criticism. "I'm concerned about that," said Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D., Calif.), also on NBC. "Somebody made the decision that they would give extra scrutiny to this particular group. And I think we have to understand why." 
 
 The IRS said over the weekend it is in the process of independently confirming the dates mentioned on the timeline of events contained in the inspector general report, "but we believe the [inspector general's] timeline is correct." The IRS said the report supports its view that its missteps weren't politically motivated and were limited to lower-level workers. 
 
 The IRS also said the report reflects that "IRS senior leadership was not aware of this level of specific details" at the time of a March 2012 hearing where Mr. Shulman denied any targeting of conservative groups. Mr. Shulman, who no longer works for the IRS, declined to comment. 
 
 The new details suggest that agency workers were examining statements in applications for tax-exempt status to determine whether groups had political leanings. 
 
 Tax-exempt social-welfare groups organized under section 501(c)(4) of the Internal Revenue Code are allowed to engage in some political activity, but the primary focus of their efforts must remain promoting social welfare. That social-welfare activity can include lobbying and advocating for issues and legislation, but not outright political-campaign activity. But some of the rules leave room for IRS officials to make judgment calls and probe individual groups for further information. 
 
 Organizing as such a group is desirable, not just because such entities typically don't have to pay taxes, but also because they generally don't have to identify their donors. 
 
 IRS officials said last week that the focused review of conservative groups was initiated by lower-level civil servants in the IRS Cincinnati office, not by political appointees in Washington, and that it wasn't politically motivated. They say it stemmed from a misguided effort to centralize review of a growing number of applications for tax-exempt 501(c)(4) status. 
 
 But questions continued to swirl about the failure of IRS officials to disclose the problems until the inspector general's report was about to become public. 
 
 The timeline contained in the draft report indicates that IRS scrutiny of tea-party and other conservative groups began as early as 2010 and came to the attention of Ms. Lerner, the head of the tax-exempt-organizations division, at least by the following year. 
 
 The report's timeline indicates that the criteria were changed to be more neutral in July 2011 after Ms. Lerner "raised concerns." The criteria for heightened scrutiny continued to evolve over the next year or so, even as complaints from tea-party groups—and questions from GOP lawmakers—mounted over IRS inquiries to various groups about their activities. 
 
 Letters from Ms. Lerner in April and May 2012 responding to questions by Republican lawmakers made no mention of the problems that had surfaced in the IRS unit. 
 
 According to the draft report, on April 24 and 25 of last year, officials in Ms. Lerner's office were reviewing "troubling questions" that had been asked of organizations, including "the names of donors." 
 
 Ms. Lerner's April 26 letter to Mr. Issa, the chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, said that "there are instances where donor information may be needed…such as when the application presents possible issues of…private benefit." 
 
 The report indicates that in 2010 and 2011, some IRS workers weren't just singling out groups because their names contained certain words, as IRS officials suggested on Friday, but appeared to be probing for indications of political interests or leanings. 
 
 According to the report, by June 2011 some IRS specialists were probing applications using the following criteria: "issues include government spending, government debt or taxes; education of the public by advocacy/lobbying to 'make America a better place to live'; statements in the case file criticize how the country is being run." 
 
 Write to John D. McKinnon at john.mckinnon@wsj.com and Siobhan Hughes at siobhan.hughes@dowjones.com 
 
 A version of this article appeared May 13, 2013, on page A1 in the U.S. edition of The Wall Street Journal, with the headline: Wider Problems Found at IRS. ||||| In a press conference Monday, President Obama addressed the Internal Revenue Service’s targeting of groups critical of government, and said, “I’ve got no patience with it. I will not tolerate it.” (The Washington Post) 
 
 In a press conference Monday, President Obama addressed the Internal Revenue Service’s targeting of groups critical of government, and said, “I’ve got no patience with it. I will not tolerate it.” (The Washington Post) 
 
 Internal Revenue Service officials in Washington and at least two other offices were involved with investigating conservative groups seeking tax-exempt status, making clear that the effort reached well beyond the branch in Cincinnati that was initially blamed, according to documents obtained by The Washington Post. 
 
 IRS officials at the agency’s Washington headquarters sent queries to conservative groups asking about their donors and other aspects of their operations, while officials in the El Monte and Laguna Niguel offices in California sent similar questionnaires to tea-party-affiliated groups, the documents show. 
 
 IRS employees in Cincinnati told conservatives seeking the status of “social welfare” groups that a task force in Washington was overseeing their applications, according to interviews with the activists. 
 
 Lois G. Lerner, who oversees tax-exempt groups for the IRS, told reporters Friday that the “absolutely inappropriate” actions were undertaken by “front-line people” working in Cincinnati to target groups with “tea party,” “patriot” or “9/12” in their names. 
 
 In one instance, however, Ron Bell, an IRS employee, informed a lawyer representing a conservative group focused on voter fraud that the application was under review in Washington. On several other occasions, IRS officials in Washington and California sent conservative groups detailed questionnaires about their voter outreach and other activities, according to the documents. 
 
 View Graphic A report due this week says the IRS targeted groups with names containing “tea party” and “patriot.” 
 
 “For the IRS to say it was some low-level group in Cincinnati is simply false,” said Cleta Mitchell, a partner in the law firm Foley & Lardner who sought to communicate with IRS headquarters about the delay in granting tax-exempt status to True the Vote. 
 
 Moreover, details of the IRS’s efforts to target conservative groups reached the highest levels of the agency in May 2012, far earlier than has been disclosed, according to Republican congressional aides briefed by the IRS and the Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration ­(TIGTA) on the details of their reviews. 
 
 Then-Commissioner Douglas Shulman, a George W. Bush appointee who stepped down in November, received a briefing from the TIGTA about what was happening in the Cincinnati office in May 2012, the aides said. His deputy and the agency’s current acting commissioner, Steven T. Miller, also learned about the matter that month, the aides said. 
 
 The officials did not share details with Republican lawmakers who had been demanding to know whether the IRS was targeting conservative groups, Republicans said. 
 
 “I wrote to the IRS three times last year after hearing concerns that conservative groups were being targeted,” Sen. Orrin G. Hatch (Utah), the ranking Republican on the Senate Finance Committee, said in a statement Monday. “In response to the first letter I sent with some of my colleagues, Steven Miller, the current Acting IRS Commissioner, responded that these groups weren’t being targeted.” 
 
 “Knowing what we know now,” he added, “the IRS was at best being far from forth coming, or at worst, being deliberately dishonest with Congress.” 
 
 As new details emerged Monday, Democrats and Republicans alike decried the agency’s actions as an unacceptable abuse of power. 
 
 In a news conference Monday, President Obama said he learned of the investigating in media reports on Friday and has “no patience with it.” 
 
 “If in fact IRS personnel engaged in the kind of practices that have been reported on, and were intentionally targeting conservative groups, then that’s outrageous,” Obama said. “And there’s no place for it. And they have to be held fully accountable.” 
 
 White House spokesman Jay Carney told reporters Monday that the White House counsel’s office learned of an upcoming IRS inspector general’s report on April 22 as part of a routine notification but had not received access to the report. 
 
 On Capitol Hill, two Senate panels — the Finance Committee and the Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations — announced Monday that they will investigate. The House Oversight and Government Reform Committee and the Ways and Means Committee have been looking into reports of IRS attempts to single out organizations on the right for heightened scrutiny. Ways and Means has called IRS officials to testify Friday. 
 
 “These actions by the IRS are an outrageous abuse of power and a breach of the public’s trust,” said Senate Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus (D-Mont.). “The IRS will now be the ones put under additional scrutiny.” 
 
 Separately, Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) and Rep. Mike Turner (R-Ohio) introduced companion bills Monday that would require the IRS to fire any employee found “willfully” violating “the constitutional rights of a taxpayer,” according to statements by both lawmakers. The bills also would make them criminally liable for their actions. 
 
 Even as Obama vowed that his administration “will make sure that we find out exactly what happened on this,” however, the IRS offered no new information on how it selected which groups to single out for scrutiny. 
 
 The White House is legally barred from contacting the IRS about a tax matter, under a prohibition adopted after the Watergate scandal. And although it can contact the Treasury Department about tax issues, neither Treasury nor the IRS can disclose specific taxpayer information. The IRS can release information about a petition for tax- 
 
 exempt status only after it has been approved. 
 
 Obama is not in a position to remove Lerner, a career official who can be terminated for cause only under normal civil service proceedings. The IRS has two political appointees: the commissioner, who serves a five-year term, and the chief counsel. 
 
 As the IRS came under broader political attack Monday, more details surfaced on how the exempt-organizations division struggled to determine which nonprofits should receive “social welfare” status after the 2010 Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission ruling. That decision, which allowed corporations and unions to raise and spend un­limited amounts of money on elections, opened the door for groups to accept undisclosed contributions as long as their “primary purpose” was not politics. 
 
 In a Jan. 9, 2012, letter to the Richmond Tea Party, IRS specialist Stephen Seok asked questions including “the names of the donors, contributors and grantors,” as well as the size of the contributions and grants, and when they were given. 
 
 
 
 Richmond Tea Party President Larry Nordvig, whose group applied for tax-exempt status in December 2009 and received it in July 2012, said the extended inquiry had “a very chilling effect” on how much money the group could raise because its donors preferred anonymity. 
 
 The Wetumpka Tea Party of Alabama experienced a two-year delay after submitting its initial application. 
 
 Becky Gerritson, a 44-year-old stay-at-home mother and the group’s president, said the IRS sent a questionnaire asking for the names of all volunteers, donor identification and contribution amounts, the names of any legislators its members had communicated with directly or indirectly, and the contents of all speeches its members had made, among a long list of other details. 
 
 “I was outraged,” Gerritson said. “Being an election year, I felt like it was intimidation.” 
 
 The group did not provide the information. Approval came only after the group sought help from the American Center for Law and Justice, which threatened a lawsuit against the IRS, Gerritson said. 
 
 Although some of the groups were explicitly labeled “tea party” or “patriot,” others that came under intense scrutiny were focused on challenging the Affordable Care Act — known by many as Obamacare — or the integrity of federal elections. 
 
 In a June 3, 2011, letter to the IRS, Mitchell questioned the agency’s motivations for delaying recognition of one of her clients who had filed nearly two years earlier, writing, “Is the [group’s] opposition to Obamacare and the takeover of America’s healthcare system by the government the reason that this application has been held up and not approved?” 
 
 Catherine Engelbrecht, president of the Houston-based True the Vote, first filed for tax-exempt status in July 2010. At one point, Engelbrecht — who is still awaiting a determination from the IRS regarding her voting rights organization and a separate tea party group, King Street Patriots — said an IRS employee informed her: “I’m just doing what Washington is telling me to do. I’m just asking what they want me to ask.” 
 
 The IRS did not respond to requests for comment Monday. 
 
 Josh Hicks and Julie Tate contributed to this report. 
 
 Discuss this topic and other political issues in the politics discussion forums. ||||| The Internal Revenue Service inappropriately flagged conservative political groups for additional reviews during the 2012 election to see if they were violating their tax-exempt status, a top IRS official said Friday. 
 
 FILE - In this Aug. 2, 2012 file photo, Internal Revenue Service (IRS) Commissioner Douglas Shulman testifies on Capitol Hill in Washington, before the House Oversight Committee. The Internal Revenue... (Associated Press) 
 
 Organizations were singled out because they included the words "tea party" or "patriot" in their applications for tax-exempt status, said Lois Lerner, who heads the IRS division that oversees tax-exempt groups. 
 
 In some cases, groups were asked for their list of donors, which violates IRS policy in most cases, she said. 
 
 "That was wrong. That was absolutely incorrect, it was insensitive and it was inappropriate. That's not how we go about selecting cases for further review," Lerner said at a conference sponsored by the American Bar Association. 
 
 "The IRS would like to apologize for that," she added. 
 
 Lerner said the practice was initiated by low-level workers in Cincinnati and was not motivated by political bias. After her talk, she told The AP that no high level IRS officials knew about the practice. 
 
 Agency officials found out about the practice last year and moved to correct it, the IRS said in a statement. The statement did not specify when officials found out. 
 
 About 75 groups were inappropriately targeted. None had their tax-exempt status revoked, Lerner said. 
 
 Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky called on the White House to investigate. 
 
 "Today's acknowledgement by the Obama administration that the IRS did in fact target conservative groups in the heat of last year's national election is not enough," McConnell said. "I call on the White House to conduct a transparent, government-wide review aimed at assuring the American people that these thuggish practices are not under way at the IRS or elsewhere in the administration against anyone, regardless of their political views." 
 
 Many conservative groups complained during the election that they were being harassed by the IRS. They accused the agency of frustrating their attempts to become tax exempt by sending them lengthy, intrusive questionnaires. 
 
 The forms, which the groups made available at the time, sought information about group members' political activities, including details of their postings on social networking websites and about family members. 
 
 Certain tax-exempt charitable groups can conduct political activities but it cannot be their primary activity. 
 
 IRS Commissioner Douglas Shulman told Congress in March 2012 that the IRS was not targeting groups based on their political views. 
 
 "There's absolutely no targeting. This is the kind of back and forth that happens to people" who apply for tax-exempt status, Shulman told a House Ways and Means subcommittee. 
 
 Shulman was appointed by President George W. Bush. His 6-year term ended in November. President Barack Obama has yet to nominate a successor. The agency is now being run by acting Commissioner Steven Miller. 
 
 "The Ways and Means Committee has persistently pushed the IRS to explain why it appeared to be unfairly targeting some political groups over others _ a charge they repeatedly denied," said Rep. Charles Boustany, R-La., chairman of the Ways and Means oversight subcommittee. 
 
 "The IRS's `too little too late' response is unacceptable, and I will continue to work to ensure there are protections in place so no American, regardless of political affiliation, has their right to free speech threatened by the IRS," Boustany said. 
 
 Tea Party groups were livid on Friday. 
 
 "I don't think there's any question we were unfairly targeted," said Tom Zawistowski, who until recently was president of the Ohio Liberty Coalition, an alliance of tea party groups in the state. 
 
 Zawistowski's group was among many conservative organizations that battled the IRS over what they saw as its discriminatory treatment of their effort to gain non-profit status. The group first applied for non-profit status in June 2009, and it was finally granted on Dec. 7, 2012, he said _ one month after Election Day. 
 
 During the 2012 election, many tea party groups applied for tax-exempt status under section 501 (c) (4) of the federal tax code, which grants tax-exempt status to social welfare groups. Unlike other charitable groups, these organizations are allowed to participate in political activities but their primary activity must be social welfare. 
 
 That determination is up to the IRS. 
 
 Lerner said the number of groups filing for this tax-exempt status more than doubled from 2010 to 2012, to more than 3,400. To handle the influx, the IRS centralized its review of these applications in an office in Cincinnati. 
 
 Lerner said this was done to develop expertise among staffers and consistency in their reviews. As part of the review, staffers look for signs that groups are participating in political activity. If so, IRS agents take a closer look to make sure that politics isn't the group's primary activity, Lerner said. 
 
 As part of this process, agents in Cincinnati came up with a list of things to look for in an application. As part of the list, they included the words, "tea party" and "patriot," Lerner said. 
 
 "It's the line people that did it without talking to managers," Lerner. "They're IRS workers, they're revenue agents." 
 
 In all, about 300 groups were singled out for additional review, Lerner said. Of those, about a quarter were singled out because they had "tea party" or "patriot" somewhere in their applications. 
 
 The IRS statement said that once applications were chosen for review, they all "received the same, even-handed treatment." 
 
 Lerner said 150 of the cases have been closed and no group had its tax-exempt status revoked, though some withdrew their applications. 
 
 "Mistakes were made initially, but they were in no way due to any political or partisan rationale," the IRS said in a statement. "We fixed the situation last year and have made significant progress in moving the centralized cases through our system." 
 
 Marcus S. Owens, who spent a decade leading the IRS division that oversees tax-exempt organizations, said Friday that it made sense that the problem arose among workers in Cincinnati because the agency "really has delegated a lot of authority" to local offices to make decisions about handling their workload. 
 
 But Tea Party groups weren't buying the idea that the decision to target them was solely the responsibility of low-level IRS workers. 
 
 "It is suspicious that the activity of these `low-level workers' was unknown to IRS leadership at the time it occurred," said Jenny Beth Martin, national coordinator for Tea Party Patriots, which describes itself as the nation's largest tea party organization. "President Obama must also apologize for his administration ignoring repeated complaints by these broad grassroots organizations of harassment by the IRS in 2012, and make concrete and transparent steps today to ensure this never happens again." 
 
 ___ 
 
 Associated Press reporters Alan Fram and Steve Peoples in Boston contributed to this report. 
 
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 Follow Stephen Ohlemacher on Twitter: http://twitter.com/stephenatap
– The IRS scandal goes beyond the Tea Party: Documents show that over the past two years while evaluating applications for tax-exempt status, officials also zeroed in on groups that criticized the government or educated Americans about the Constitution or the Bill of Rights; as well as groups that were interested in taxes, government spending, or government debt; limiting or expanding the government; improving America; or "social economic reform." The documents show how the Cincinnati office frequently redefined the types of groups that should be targeted for increased scrutiny, even after division chief Lois Lerner objected in June 2011, the Washington Post reports. In March 2012, then-IRS Commissioner Doug Shulman testified before Congress that the IRS was not singling out conservative groups, the Wall Street Journal reports. It wasn't until May 2012 that a neutral policy was adopted, with the IRS agreeing to target any group that was significantly concerned with political campaigns. The documents don't make it clear who the decision-maker was, Reuters reports.