An extraordinary profile of senior White House adviser Ben Rhodes, published in the New York Times on Thursday, was very revealing about President Obama. It told a complicated story of how an administration that the president promised would be the most transparent in history prides itself on successful manipulation of journalists.

The critical insight of the story is about the Obama administration’s dishonesty in selling the Iran nuclear deal to the public. It turns out, for example, that the story carried by the press about the Iran deal being possible because of the election of a more moderate government in Tehran, was made up. It was a fiction, as various actual experts on the subject warned at the time. That is, in real terms, it was a lie. The deal was in fact already in the works in 2012, a year earlier than anyone knew.