A State Department spokesman insisted on Thursday that neither he nor anyone else in the department could tell the difference between an intentional edit that removed several minutes of a 2013 press briefing video, and a “glitch.”
State immediately decided the missing video was the result of a “glitch,” even though it looked more like an edit that was made to remove a part of the briefing that also quickly signified some time had passed.
The edit was captured in a tweet that showed a white flash to designate part of the video had been removed.
But on Thursday, spokesman Mark Toner said he personally couldn’t tell if it was a glitch, or an edit.
“I’m not sure that as a layman I would have been able to say that it was a professionally done editing job,” he told reporters. One reporter openly said that explanation isn’t “plausible,” but Toner disagreed.
“Understand that we’re all not broadcast-experienced press officers here at the State Department,” he said.
Toner also said once it became clear it was an edit, “we corrected ourselves.” He said the recognition that it was an edit happened “very shortly after that initial response.”
But that comment seems to go against what the department was telling reporters. Two weeks after State first said it was a “glitch,” spokeswoman Elizabeth Trudeau was asked about it, and didn’t clarify at that time that they now believed it was an intentional edit.
State said Thursday that it has hit a “dead end” in its investigation into who ordered the edit.
