WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Republicans investigating the Internal Revenue Service want to question five employees about the tax agency’s targeting of the Tea Party and other conservative groups, an effort that a key lawmaker said was part of a fact-finding mission.

“It appears that a number of IRS employees played key roles in carrying out the improper scrutiny,” Republican Representative Darrell Issa, head of the Oversight and Government Reform Committee in the U.S. House of Representatives, said in a letter on Wednesday to the IRS requesting interviews with the employees.

WASHINGTON May 15 (Reuters) – The Justice Department’s
controversial decision to seize phone records of Associated
Press journalists was just one element in a sweeping U.S.
government investigation into media leaks about a Yemen-based
plot to bomb a U.S. airliner, government officials said on
Wednesday.

The search for who leaked the information is being led by
the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Washington and has involved
extensive FBI interviews of personnel at the Justice Department,
U.S. intelligence agencies, the White House’s National Security
staff and the FBI itself.

WASHINGTON, May 14 (Reuters) – U.S. Attorney General Eric
Holder said on Tuesday he did not make the controversial
decision to secretly seize telephone records of the Associated
Press but defended his department’s actions in the investigation
of what he called a “very, very serious leak.”

The decision to seek phone records of one of the world’s
largest news-gathering organizations was made by Deputy Attorney
General Jim Cole, Holder said.