WASHINGTON (AP) — For the third time in a year, the federal government is examining the books of a group that promotes the use of condoms to fight AIDS and whose leaders have criticized the Bush administration’s support for “abstinence-only” sex education.

Auditors from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention were expected to begin a weeklong review Aug. 18 at the Washington headquarters of Advocates for Youth. The CDC and the congressional General Accounting Office have previously conducted audits, said Debra Hauser, the group’s vice president.

“What we’re concerned about is that it appears that the selective and political use of the audits is to intimidate those organizations that are standing up for comprehensive sex education and are opposed to abstinence until marriage programs,” Hauser said.

Rep. Henry Waxman, a Democrat, said the audits of Advocates for Youth and the Sexuality Information and Education Council of the United States continue a disturbing trend in which similar scrutiny is not applied to “abstinence-only” programs discouraging all sex before marriage and forbidding discussion of the benefits of birth control or condom use.

“Whether a group believes that abstinence is the only acceptable means of achieving AIDS prevention seems to be the determining factor in these auditing decisions,” Waxman said in a letter to Health and Human Services Secretary Tommy Thompson.

Kathy Harben, a CDC spokesperson, declined to characterize the reviews as audits. She said the agency was responding to a request by Rep. Joseph Pitts, a Republican, to check whether the groups were using federal money to lobby, which is prohibited.

“We regularly conduct site visits of all our grantees,” Harben said.

She said she was unaware of any similar visits to “abstinence-only” AIDS prevention programs.

Administration officials have previously denied any political motivations to the audits.

Hauser said her group would apply for more AIDS prevention grants in the future, provided they allow for comprehensive sex education.