WASHINGTON – The Naacp’s chairman says the group’s tax-exempt status is under review by the government in an investigation he contends stems from a speech he gave that criticized President Bush.

The head of the Internal Revenue Service did not confirm that his agency was investigating the nation’s oldest civil rights organization, but he strongly rejected the idea that the agency would conduct an audit for political reasons.

Documents provided to the Associated Press yesterday by the office of Julian Bond, chairman of the Baltimore based National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, said IRS agents were investigating his keynote address July 11 at the Naacp’s annual convention in Philadelphia.

In that speech, Mr. Bond said of the Bush administration: “They preach racial neutrality and practice racial division. They’ve tried to patch the leaky economy and every other domestic problem with duct tape and plastic sheets. They write a new constitution of Iraq and they ignore the Constitution here at home.”

For an organization to keep its tax-exempt status, “leaders cannot make partisan comments in official organization publications or at official organizational functions,” according to an October 8 letter to the Naacp from the IRS office in Louisville, Ky.

The Naacp had until last Saturday to respond but was granted an extension until next week, Mr. Bond said. He criticized the IRS for trying to limit the group’s ability to express its opinions.

“Coming just weeks before the election, what other reason could there be,” Mr. Bond said in a telephone interview yesterday. “We have always been nonpartisan, but we are not noncritical.”

He charged that the investigation amounted to a “blatant political use of the IRS.”

Federal law bars the IRS from commenting on investigations into specific tax-exempt organizations such as the Naacp. But the agency’s commissioner said any investigations are based on decisions by career civil servants and not political appointees.

“Any suggestion that the IRS has tilted its audit activities for political purposes is repugnant and groundless,” Mark Everson said in a statement.

Mr. Bond said his remarks in Philadelphia were in line with previous speeches from Naacp leaders who have criticized and praised Republican and Democratic administrations. The organization has not endorsed a candidate in this year’s presidential race.