State Department Intentionally Deleted Video of Iran Back-and-ForthBy Felicia Schwartz
http://blogs.wsj.com/washwire/2016/06/01/state-department-intentionally-deleted-video-of-iran-back-and-forth/
The Obama administration had many tense exchanges with reporters as it pursued diplomatic talks with Iran on its nuclear program. But it revealed on Wednesday that at least one of those exchanges, from 2013, had been deliberately deleted from the State Department’s public online video archives.
A State Department editor erased a portion of the Dec. 2, 2013 briefing before posting the footage online, State Department spokesman John Kirby told reporters on Wednesday.
The editor did so after receiving a phone call from another employee in the State Department’s public affairs bureau transmitting the request, Mr. Kirby said, adding that the deletion probably happened on the same day as the briefing and he didn’t know who specifically requested the footage be erased. Earlier this month, a different State Department official had attributed the deletion to a “glitch.”
In the tape, which has since been restored, a Fox News reporter asked then-State Department spokeswoman Jen Psaki whether her predecessor had been truthful when responding to questions in 2013 about secret contacts with Iran.
The backstory: In February 2013, the reporter, James Rosen, had asked previous State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland whether the U.S. was holding secret bilateral talks with Iran outside of the formal channel between Iran and six world powers. She said the U.S. wasn’t.
It was later reported that the U.S. had done just that. CONTINUE AT SITE
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