Information buried in an internal State Department review has compounded allegations that the Department intentionally deleted an exchange about secret talks between the United States and Iran from a press briefing video, Fox News reports.
The clipped December 2013 exchange featured Fox News reporter James Rosen asking then-State Department spokeswoman Jen Psaki whether the Obama administration had lied about having bilateral talks with Iran—a claim that Psaki did not deny, but that her predecessor, Victoria Nuland, had denied months before.
“Is it the policy of the State Department, where the preservation or the secrecy of secret negotiations is concerned, to lie in order to achieve that goal?” Rosen said in the video.
“James, I think there are times where diplomacy needs privacy in order to progress. This is a good example of that,” Psaki said.
State had initially claimed that a white flash in the video replacing that exchange had been a “glitch,” but admitted in June that the relevant portion of the video was removed by “specific request.”
In addressing the deletion Thursday, State Department spokesman John Kirby told reporters that there was “no evidence” that the footage was edited “with the intent to conceal information from the public,” though an internal review by the Department found evidence to the contrary.
Fox News reports:
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