The White House is trying to regain the upper hand after being knocked on the defensive over its response to deadly attacks in Benghazi, Libya, the seizure of journalists’ phone records in a Justice Department leak investigation, and the Internal Revenue Service’s targeting of conservative groups for special scrutiny.

Now, President Barack Obama’s closest advisers want to find a way to return attention to his top priorities, such as creating more jobs and reforming immigration laws, while continuing to show they are trying to get to the bottom of the controversies.

“I think what they’ve done in the last two days is a great demonstration that they’re prepared to own this stuff and deal with it,” said Tad Devine, a longtime Democratic strategist invited to the Thursday meeting.

“There’s always going to be bumps in the road. That’s just the nature of it. I think they’re going to be fine, as long as they stick to the big issues,” Devine told Reuters.

About a dozen outside strategists huddled with White House Chief of Staff Denis McDonough, senior advisers Valerie Jarrett and Dan Pfeiffer, communications director Jen Palmieri and press secretary Jay Carney.

Pfeiffer confirmed the meeting but declined to provide details.

The session was one of a handful of regularly scheduled meetings between Obama aides and outside advisers. It was scheduled after the trio of crises were in full swing – but participants said it would be incorrect to call it a crisis summit.

Obama is ending the week by traveling to Baltimore on Friday to talk about his proposals to boost early-childhood education, create manufacturing jobs and fix crumbling infrastructure.

“I can’t think of any better time” for such a trip, said Devine, who said polls and focus groups consistently show that voters want elected leaders to focus on the economy rather than “peripheral issues.”

DAMAGE-CONTROL MODE

At the beginning of the week the White House struggled to counter criticism about the scandals. By midweek, that had changed, with damage control in full swing.

On Wednesday Obama announced that the acting head of the IRS had been asked to resign and on Thursday announced a successor, delivering the swift action that critics had called for after news of the extra scrutiny first came out.

While defending his Attorney General Eric Holder and Justice Department investigations into leaks about national security issues, Obama also pushed for Congress to revive proposals that would help reporters protect their sources.

The White House released 100 pages of emails to demonstrate transparency on its deliberations over how to explain the September 11, 2012, attacks that killed four Americans in Benghazi, including U.S. Ambassador Chris Stevens.

Mike McCurry, a longtime press secretary to former President Bill Clinton who attended Thursday’s meeting, said criticism that the White House had been slow to respond to the controversies was unfair.

“They had to be patient, and they had to get it right,” he said.

McCurry said White House officials made clear at the meeting that they were determined to respond effectively to the issues dominating the news this week without losing sight of the president’s other priorities, including strengthening the economy.

“Most of the discussion was, how can you effectively do that,” he said.

Outside strategists said it might be worthwhile for the White House to reorganize its staff to have a point person or two for the scandals, particularly as Congress delves deeper into its IRS investigations. But they said they had no indication that might happen.

Reorganizing White House staff could leave spokesman Jay Carney freer to talk about Obama’s agenda in daily briefings rather than being bogged down in daily interrogations about the details of congressional probes, they said.

(Additional reporting by Mark Felsenthal; Editing by Philip Barbara)

Danny Werfel, who has been Obama’s point man in overseeing the controversial “sequestration” budget cuts, will tackle the biggest scandal of Obama’s presidency when he takes charge of the IRS on May 22.

It could be a thankless job.

The IRS faces a criminal investigation and at least three congressional probes in the wake of last week’s revelation that during the past three years, the agency’s examiners had targeted conservative groups for extra scrutiny after the groups applied for tax-exempt status.

The agency has been without a permanent chief since November and lost another senior official on Thursday when Joseph Grant, the head of the division at the center of the scandal, announced plans to retire.

Grant’s retirement followed Obama’s decision on Wednesday to fire acting IRS Commissioner Steven Miller. The IRS has acknowledged that Miller knew about the targeting of conservative groups last year; several members of Congress have complained that Miller did not tell them about it.

Obama is racing to get ahead of a political firestorm that threatens to derail his second-term agenda as Republicans and conservative groups accuse his administration of using the levers of power – including the IRS, which is supposed to be non-partisan – to persecute political enemies.

The Democratic president has rejected that notion, and said he did not know about the IRS’s targeting of conservative “Tea Party” and “Patriot” groups until the agency acknowledged last week that it had done so.

Obama fired Miller after an internal IRS audit released on Tuesday found that poor management – not partisan politics – had led to an “inappropriate” focus on conservative groups.

“I think we’re going to be able to figure out exactly what happened, who was involved, what went wrong, and we’re going to be able to implement steps to fix it,” Obama said at a news conference on Thursday with Turkish Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan.

“It is just simply unacceptable for there to even be a hint of partisanship or ideology when it comes to the application of our tax laws,” Obama added.

Obama has faced a series of recent setbacks that could threaten his ability to pursue priorities such as revamping the nation’s immigration laws and a budget deal with congressional Republicans.

Obama’s Republican critics have hammered the administration’s handling of the deadly militant attack last year on the U.S. mission in Benghazi, Libya, and the Justice Department has faced bipartisan criticism for seizing phone records of journalists from the Associated Press as part of a criminal probe into intelligence leaks.

‘SOMETHING PROFOUNDLY UN-AMERICAN’

On Capitol Hill the IRS scandal seemed to rewind the clock to 2010, when groups aligned with the conservative Tea Party movement were a frequent and vocal presence outside Congress.

“There is something profoundly un-American about targeting your political opponents,” Kentucky Republican Senator Rand Paul, a potential 2016 presidential candidate, told a crowd of about 100 Tea Party enthusiasts outside the Capitol on Thursday.

The scandal dates to March 2010, as the IRS struggled to deal with a surge of new advocacy groups that sprang up in the wake of a Supreme Court decision that struck down limits on independent political spending by businesses and other outside groups.

The agency has trouble keeping track of the more than 1 million tax-exempt organizations that already exist, analysts say.

The number of applications for tax-exempt “social welfare” status nearly doubled from 2010 to 2012, according to IRS figures.

Groups applying for what is known as 501(c)4 status can engage in limited campaign activity but are not supposed to make electioneering the focus of their efforts. Unlike political campaigns, they may keep their donors secret.

Spending by these groups and other similar organizations jumped to $309 million in 2012 from $79 million in the 2008 election, according to the Center for Responsive Politics. Conservative groups accounted for about three-quarters of that total, according to the watchdog group.

As a result, the agency faced pressure from top Democrats such as Illinois Senator Dick Durbin, New York Senator Charles Schumer and Max Baucus, who heads the Senate’s tax-writing committee, to make sure the non-profit groups weren’t exploiting a loophole to evade taxes and keep their donors secret.

Because that activity lacked revenue-generating potential, it was seen as a low priority within an agency whose central mission is tax collection, according to tax specialists.

The IRS gave the task to a field office in Cincinnati, Ohio, rather than assign it to higher-ranking staff in its Washington headquarters.

According to an internal IRS watchdog, that unit set its own criteria for checking tax-exempt groups in the absence of clear guidance from more senior officials.

AN ‘INTRUSIVE’ AUDIT

At the rally on Thursday, Tea Party speakers described how the increased scrutiny prevented them from participating in the democratic process – in some cases by delaying their groups’ applications until after the 2012 elections had passed and in other cases through overly intrusive questioning by IRS agents that some Tea party groups say led them to give up their organizing efforts.

“The IRS just keeps asking questions. Our audit has been so intrusive,” said Susan McLaughlin of the Liberty Tea Party in Liberty Township, Ohio. McLaughlin said her group had been waiting for three years to win tax-exempt status.

Republicans in Congress vowed to conduct a thorough investigation.

Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky called on the IRS’s internal watchdog to investigate whether the agency had leaked the donor list of the National Organization for Marriage, a conservative group fighting gay-marriage initiatives, to a rival group.

“This is what government intimidation and harassment looks like,” McConnell said.

They may get some answers on Friday, when ousted IRS chief Miller testifies before the House of Representatives Ways and Means Committee.

The man who will fill his shoes worked as a non-partisan civil servant in the White House budget office for Republican President George W. Bush before Obama asked him to take on the more partisan role of controller.

Werfel, 42, developed a track record of coolly responding to harsh questions from lawmakers as he testified several times this year about the “sequestration” budget cuts that kicked in after Congress and the White House failed to reach a larger deficit-reduction deal.

Werfel takes over a tax agency that is maligned by many Americans even in the best of times. Obama eventually will have to decide whether to ask the Democrat-led Senate to confirm Werfel to the job permanently or nominate another candidate who could win more support among Republicans.

“No one in their right mind would want the job right now,” said Paul Streckfus, a tax journalist who used to work in the IRS division that is now at the center of the scandal.

As the furor has increased, some key IRS employees have pulled out of public events.

Lois Lerner, the IRS official who broke the news of the scandal last week, canceled plans to speak at a graduation ceremony for her law-school alma mater, Western New England University.

And in Washington, the IRS softball team canceled a scheduled match against the staff of Senator John Cornyn, the Texas Republican said on Facebook.

(Additional reporting by Thomas Ferraro, Richard Cowan, Kim Dixon, Tabassum Zakaria, Elvina Nawaguna, Mark Felsenthal, Kevin Drawbaugh, Nanette Byrnes, Roberta Rampton; Writing by Andy Sullivan; Editing by David Lindsey and Jim Loney)

Danny Werfel, the controller of the Office of Management and Budget who served as a point man on the controversial automatic spending cuts known as “sequestration,” will start in the new post on May 22.

Obama is racing to get out in front of a scandal that threatens to derail his second-term agenda as Republicans and conservative groups accuse his administration of using the levers of power to persecute political enemies.

“I think we’re going to be able to figure out exactly what happened, who was involved, what went wrong, and we’re going to be able to implement steps to fix it,” Obama said at an unrelated news conference with the Turkish prime minister.

“It is just simply unacceptable for there to even be a hint of partisanship or ideology when it comes to the application of our tax laws,” he added.

Obama has said he did not know about the actions of IRS employees who targeted conservative groups for extra scrutiny as they sought tax-exempt status before the news became public last week.

Obama has faced a series of recent setbacks that could threaten his ability to pursue priorities like immigration reform and a budget deal.

Republicans have hammered the administration’s handling of a deadly militant attack last year on the U.S. mission in Benghazi, Libya, and the Justice Department has been criticized for seizing phone records of journalists from the Associated Press as part of a criminal probe into intelligence leaks.

The IRS scandal has prompted at least three congressional probes, as well as a criminal investigation by the Justice Department. Obama fired the agency’s acting director on Wednesday after an internal IRS watchdog found poor management led to an “inappropriate” focus on conservative groups.

Werfel has a track record of coolly responding to harsh questions from lawmakers. He testified multiple times this year about the damaging budget cuts that kicked in after Congress and the White House failed to reach a larger deficit reduction deal.

“The American people deserve to have the utmost confidence and trust in their government, and as we work to get to the bottom of what happened and restore confidence in the IRS, Danny has the experience and management ability necessary to lead the agency at this important time,” Obama said in a statement.

As the much-maligned agency faces withering scrutiny, IRS employees have pulled out of public events.

Lois Lerner, the head of the division that examines nonprofit claims, canceled plans to speak at a graduation ceremony for her law-school alma mater, Western New England University. The IRS softball team canceled a scheduled match with the office of Senator John Cornyn, the Texas Republican said on Facebook.

‘SOMETHING PROFOUNDLY UN-AMERICAN’

On Capitol Hill, the scandal seemed to rewind the clock to 2009 and 2010, when groups aligned with the conservative Tea Party movement were a frequent and vocal presence outside Congress.

At a rally that drew about 100 people from around the country, dozens of Tea Party leaders denounced the IRS and raised questions about the Obama administration’s involvement.

“There is something profoundly un-American about targeting your political opponents,” Kentucky Republican Senator Rand Paul, a potential 2016 presidential candidate, told the crowd.

Tea Party leaders described how the IRS prevented them from participating in the democratic process – in some cases by delaying their applications until after elections had passed, and in other cases through intrusive questioning that prompted some to give up their organizing effort altogether.

“The IRS just keeps asking questions. Our audit has been so intrusive,” said Susan McLaughlin of the Liberty Tea Party in Liberty Township, Ohio. McLaughlin said her group had been waiting for three years to win tax-exempt status.

In the Senate, Republicans called on the IRS’s internal watchdog to investigate whether the agency had leaked the donor list of the National Organization for Marriage, a conservative group fighting gay-marriage initiatives, to a rival group.

“This is what government intimidation and harassment looks like,” Republican Leader Mitch McConnell said.

Other Republicans kept up the pressure as well.

House Speaker John Boehner accused the Obama administration of “remarkable arrogance” and said the scandal might lead to jail time for IRS officials, pointing to a law that mandates up to five years in prison for government officials found guilty of extortion or “willful oppression.”

Republican Representative Darrell Issa said he wanted to question five IRS employees who may have played key roles in the scandal as his Oversight and Government Reform Committee looks into the matter.

Others said the net should be cast wider.

“The IRS low-level employees who made these egregious decisions need to be dealt with, but we also need to find out who directed them to do it and how high up does it go?” Republican Senator Rob Portman told Reuters.

(Additional reporting by Richard Cowan, Kim Dixon, Tabassum Zakaria, and Caren Bohan; Writing by Andy Sullivan; Editing by Jim Loney)

As Republicans and conservative groups accused Obama’s administration of using the levers of power to persecute political enemies, Obama raced to get out in front of a scandal that threatens to derail his second-term agenda.

“I think we’re going to be able to figure out exactly what happened, who was involved, what went wrong, and we’re going to be able to implement steps to fix it,” Obama said at a news conference.

“It is just simply unacceptable for there to even be a hint of partisanship or ideology when it comes to the application of our tax laws,” he added.

Obama has said he did not know about the actions of IRS employees who targeted conservative groups for extra scrutiny as they sought tax-exempt status before the news became public last week.

Obama has faced a series of recent setbacks that could threaten his ability to pursue priorities like immigration reform and a budget deal.

Republicans have hammered the administration’s handling of a deadly militant attack last year on the U.S. mission in Benghazi, Libya, and the Justice Department has been criticized for seizing phone records of journalists from the Associated Press as part of a criminal probe into intelligence leaks.

The IRS scandal has prompted at least three congressional probes, as well as a criminal investigation by the Justice Department. Obama fired the agency’s acting director on Wednesday after an internal IRS watchdog found poor management led to an “inappropriate” focus on conservative groups.

Obama aims to install a new IRS head by the end of this week, according to the White House.

IRS employees pulled out of public events as the much-maligned agency faced withering scrutiny.

Lois Lerner, the head of the division that examines nonprofit claims, canceled plans to speak at a graduation ceremony for her law-school alma mater, Western New England University. The IRS softball team canceled a scheduled match with the office of Senator John Cornyn, the Texas Republican said on Facebook.

‘SOMETHING PROFOUNDLY UN-AMERICAN’

On Capitol Hill, the scandal seemed to rewind the clock to 2009 and 2010, when groups aligned with the conservative Tea Party movement were a frequent and vocal presence outside Congress.

At a rally that drew about 100 people from around the country, dozens of Tea Party leaders denounced the IRS and raised questions about the Obama administration’s involvement.

“There is something profoundly un-American about targeting your political opponents,” Kentucky Republican Senator Rand Paul, a potential 2016 presidential candidate, told the crowd.

Tea Party leaders described how the IRS prevented them from participating in the democratic process – in some cases by delaying their applications until after elections had passed, and in other cases through intrusive questioning that prompted some to give up their organizing effort altogether.

“The IRS just keeps asking questions. Our audit has been so intrusive,” said Susan McLaughlin of the Liberty Tea Party in Liberty Township, Ohio. McLaughlin said her group had been waiting for three years to win tax-exempt status.

In the Senate, Republicans called on the IRS’s internal watchdog to investigate whether the agency had leaked the donor list of the National Organization for Marriage, a conservative group fighting gay-marriage initiatives, to a rival group.

“This is what government intimidation and harassment looks like,” Republican Leader Mitch McConnell said.

Other Republicans kept up the pressure as well.

House Speaker John Boehner accused the Obama administration of “remarkable arrogance” and said the scandal might lead to jail time for IRS officials, pointing to a law that mandates up to five years in prison for government officials found guilty of extortion or “willful oppression.”

Republican Representative Darrell Issa said he wanted to question five IRS employees who may have played key roles in the scandal as his Oversight and Government Reform Committee looks into the matter.

Others said the net should be cast wider.

“The IRS low-level employees who made these egregious decisions need to be dealt with, but we also need to find out who directed them to do it and how high up does it go?” Republican Senator Rob Portman told Reuters.

(Additional reporting by Richard Cowan, Kim Dixon, Tabassum Zakaria, and Caren Bohan; Writing by Andy Sullivan; Editing by Jim Loney)

In a news conference in the White House Rose Garden, Obama also said he did not know about a report by the IRS inspector general on the targeting before it was leaked to the press.

“Typically, the IG reports are not supposed to be widely distributed or shared. They tend to be, you know, a process that everybody’s trying to protect the integrity of,” Obama said at a press conference with Turkish Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan.

The president is trying to limit political fallout from the scandal, which critics say is an example of government overreach. On Wednesday, the administration ousted the IRS’s acting commissioner, Steven Miller.

Obama said further investigations would bring to light who was responsible and what had gone wrong. The IRS revealed last week that some of its officials had singled out Tea Party groups seeking tax exempt status for special scrutiny.

“The actions that were described in that IG report are unacceptable,” Obama said. “So in addition to making sure that we’ve got a new acting director there, we’re also going to make sure that we gather up the facts and hold accountable and responsible anybody who was involved in this.”

Obama also urged that laws “that create a bunch of ambiguity” for the IRS in applying tax rules be cleared up.

(Reporting by Jeff Mason, Roberta Rampton and Mark Felsenthal, writing by Laura MacInnis and Mark Felsenthal; Editing by Cynthia Osterman and Jim Loney)

Lawmakers announced legislation that would take responsibility for prosecution of sexual assault cases away from the chain of command, and President Barack Obama called a meeting with Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel and other military leaders to discuss the issue.

A group of four Democratic and Republican U.S. senators and representatives said the proposed legislation would mean that abuse case were instead handled by trained military prosecutors.

“This epidemic of sexual abuse cannot stand,” said Republican Senator Susan Collins. Democratic Senator Kirsten Gillibrand, who will introduce the measure, said the goal was to change the culture in the military.

The Pentagon has been under increasing pressure to do something about sexual assault. Its annual report on such attacks in the military released last week found that unwanted sexual contact complaints involving military personnel jumped 37 percent, to 26,000 in 2012 from 19,000 the previous year.

The report came a day after the officer in charge of the Air Force sexual assault prevention office was charged with groping a woman while drunk in a parking lot not far from the Pentagon.

And on Tuesday, the Army revealed a sergeant in the sexual assault prevention office at Fort Hood in Texas was also being accused of sex crimes, including allegations linking him to prostitution.

Hagel has ordered the retraining and recertification of U.S. military personnel whose job it is to work to prevent sexual assault and assist the victims. But the Pentagon has made clear Hagel is open to further actions.

Hagel and other military chiefs will meet Obama on Thursday afternoon to discuss their efforts to stop sexual assaults in the armed forces, a White House spokeswoman said. Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Martin Dempsey, the president’s top uniformed military adviser, will attend the meeting.

Democratic Senators Claire McCaskill of Missouri and Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota introduced a bill on Wednesday to force Hagel to take action to strengthen sexual assault prevention programs, including improving the training and qualifications of those who work in those jobs.

Hagel last week publicly opposed taking responsibility for the prosecution of sex crimes out of the hands of the military chain of command, but Pentagon officials since then have emphasized his willingness to be flexible and work with members of Congress.

(Reporting by Jeff Mason and Patricia Zengerle; Editing by David Brunnstrom)

The documents gave a glimpse into the administration’s message control as officials carefully debated via email which details U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Susan Rice should highlight when she went on talk shows five days later to discuss the September 11 assault on the U.S. mission in Benghazi, Libya.

There was little in the roughly 100 pages of emails about Rice’s “talking points” that had not been leaked previously.

They included an email confirming perhaps the most damaging charge that administration officials removed mention from Rice’s talking points that the CIA had warned of an al Qaeda threat in the area of the eastern Libyan city before the attacks.

The exchange between White House, State Department and intelligence officials showed the talking points went through a series of revisions that scrubbed them of references to terror warnings before Ambassador Chris Stevens and three other Americans were killed.

While awkward for the White House, releasing the emails was an effort to counter complaints from Republicans and the media that President Barack Obama’s administration is secretive.

It came as the government was battling criticism on several fronts, including a scandal over the Internal Revenue Service’s targeting of conservative groups for special scrutiny.

In the Benghazi emails, then-State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland raised concerns about references to intelligence about the threat from militants in eastern Libya.

Nuland wrote that she had “serious concerns” that the talking points would provide members of Congress with material to “beat the State Department for not paying attention to (Central Intelligence) Agency warnings” about threats in the region.

Those references were deleted from the final talking points that Rice used on the Sunday morning talk shows on September 16.

Nuland noted in one of her emails that changes during the draft process “don’t resolve all my issues or those of my building leadership,” suggesting officials above her at the State Department were also concerned.

It was not clear who she was referring to but Republicans have tried to link former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, a possible Democratic candidate for president in 2016, to the controversy over Benghazi.

“The seemingly political nature of the State Department’s concerns raises questions about the motivations behind these changes and who at the State Department was seeking them,” said Brendan Buck, a spokesman for Republican Speaker of the House of Representatives John Boehner.

Republicans say the talking points were an attempt to portray the attacks as arising from a spontaneous protest, and not an organized militant assault, so as to protect Obama in last year’s presidential campaign from any charges that he was weak on fighting terrorism.

COVER-UP DENIAL

The White House vehemently denies any cover-up and emphasizes that the controversy over the talking points focuses on intelligence that eventually evolved. The emails, officials said, showed a normal back and forth between government agencies on a fluid national security event.

“Collectively these emails make clear that the interagency process, including the White House’s interactions, were focused on providing the facts as we knew them based on the best information available at the time and protecting an ongoing investigation,” White House spokesman Eric Schultz said.

Officials also suggested that Nuland was not the only one with concerns about the original talking points.

A senior intelligence official said Michael Morell, the CIA’s deputy director, had his own concerns that mirrored, independently, the issues raised by the State Department.

But the documents do not show any emails by Morell expressing those concerns.

In fact an email by his boss, then-CIA director David Petraeus, indicated he felt the talking points had been watered down too much.

“Frankly, I’d just as soon not use this,” Petraeus wrote on September 15.

Rice has become the most senior political scalp in the Benghazi controversy. She withdrew her name as a candidate to replace Clinton as secretary of state largely because of the political uproar over her remarks on the September 16 talk shows.

The administration officials said the emails showed the talking points were based on intelligence information approved by the CIA and meant to avoid pre-judging the outcome of an FBI investigation into the Benghazi attacks.

(Additional reporting by Mark Hosenball; Editing by Paul Simao)

President Barack Obama has faced Republican criticism that his administration covered up details of the assault, especially after a news report last week said the emails were edited to omit a CIA warning of an al Qaeda threat.

There appeared to be little in the roughly 100 pages of emails that has not been leaked previously. Senior administration officials told reporters at the White House the emails were released to clear up misinformation about the process.

The emails were the basis for the controversial “talking points” memos that U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Susan Rice used when discussing the attacks that killed four Americans in Benghazi.

Republicans say the talking points were an attempt to portray the attacks as arising from a spontaneous protest, and not an organized terrorist assault, so as to protect Obama in last year’s presidential campaign from any charges that he was weak on fighting terrorism.

They believe the emails show the talking points were changed because of intervention by a State Department that felt vulnerable for not doing more to prevent the attacks.

“The seemingly political nature of the State Department’s concerns raises questions about the motivations behind these changes and who at the State Department was seeking them,” said Brendan Buck, a spokesman for Republican Speaker of the House of Representatives John Boehner.

The State Department raised concerns about references in the talking points that could be used by members of Congress to criticize State officials for not heeding warnings by the CIA about the threat from militants in eastern Libya, the emails show.

The officials said the emails showed the talking points were based on intelligence information approved by the CIA and meant to avoid pre-judging the outcome of an FBI investigation into the September 12, 2012, attacks.

(Additional reporting by Mark Hosenball; Editing by Bill Trott)

U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder, testifying before a House of Representatives panel, provided limited responses on the issue, noting he had been recused from the probe into a government leak that led to the records seizure.

Lawmakers on the House Judiciary Committee became frustrated that Holder could not answer why the subpoena to obtain the records was so broad and why the Justice Department did not first try to negotiate with AP to obtain information.

“We don’t know where the buck stops,” said U.S. Representative Jim Sensenbrenner, a Wisconsin Republican.

The seizure of phone records last year became public on Monday when the AP complained about it. Critics have called it a gross intrusion into freedom of the press and questioned the Obama administration’s national security justification for such a broad sweep.

Representative Zoe Lofgren, a California Democrat, said it was clear to her that the Justice Department impaired the First Amendment right to free speech.

“Reporters who might previously have believed that a confidential source will speak to them will no longer have that level of confidence,” Lofgren said.

Apparently trying to counter the criticism, the White House sought on Wednesday to show its commitment to a robust media, saying it wants to revive legislation that would give journalists legal protection when guarding their sources.

The AP said it was informed last Friday that the Justice Department had gathered records for more than 20 phone lines assigned to the news agency and its reporters, covering April and May of last year.

The subpoena was part of an investigation into whether an unauthorized leak led to an AP report in May 2012 about an operation conducted by the CIA and allied intelligence agencies that stopped a Yemen-based al Qaeda plot to bomb a U.S.-bound airplane.

The AP issue emerged as President Barack Obama faces a barrage of criticism over his administration’s handling of other issues – notably the Internal Revenue Service’s targeting of conservative groups for extra scrutiny.

ACCOUNTABILITY

Holder said on Tuesday that he recused himself from the AP matter to avoid a potential conflict of interest because he had been interviewed by the FBI as part of the same leak investigation.

Responding to lawmakers’ questions on Wednesday, Holder said he did not have specific knowledge about how the subpoena was formulated, and added that it was Deputy Attorney General Jim Cole who authorized the document.

Lawmakers asked Holder to ensure that Cole would submit to their questions about the subpoena. The attorney general cautioned that Cole might be limited because he is the lead prosecutor on the open investigation into the leak, but he said he would pass along the request.

Holder did seek to address the panel’s complaints in some form, saying that after the investigation wraps up, he would study the Justice Department’s actions in the probe.

“Given the attention that it has generated, some kind of after-action analysis would be appropriate, and I will pledge to this committee, to the American people, that I will engage in such an analysis,” Holder said.

PUSH FOR MEDIA SHIELD LAW

In a move apparently designed to mollify critics, White House spokesman Jay Carney said the administration is seeking to revive a 2009 media shield bill that had been sponsored by Democratic Senator Charles Schumer of New York.

Carney declined to comment on the timing of the White House’s renewed interest in the bill.

“The White House has been in contact with Senator Schumer and we are glad to see that that legislation will be reintroduced because he believes strongly that we need to provide the protections to the media that this legislation would do,” he said.

The bill, known as the Free Flow of Information Act, would likely not have prevented the AP phone records seizure.

It would give federal protection to reporters who decline to release information about their sources because of a promise of confidentiality but would also allow national security, law enforcement, and fair trial needs to outweigh journalists’ rights to keep their sources confidential, Schumer’s office said.

“This kind of law would balance national security needs against the public’s right to the free flow of information,” Schumer said in a statement on Wednesday. “At minimum, our bill would have ensured a fairer, more deliberate process in this case.”

Reuters was one of nearly 50 news organizations that signed a letter to Holder on Tuesday complaining about the AP phone record seizures.

(Reporting By David Ingram, writing by Karey Van Hall, Editing by Frances Kerry)