Secretary of State John Kerry on Friday slammed the selective editing of a video of a State Department press briefing on the Iran deal, calling it “stupid and clumsy and inappropriate”.
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In a separate letter, Chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee Ed Royce asked the State Department Inspector General to open its own investigation, saying the incident raised disturbing questions.
The State Department said Friday that the person involved in the editing had cleared Psaki of any wrongdoing, although they could not recall otherwise what public affairs official had been involved.
Other Republicans have also voiced concerns.
In the exchange with Psaki, Rosen suggested that former spokesperson Victoria Nuland had misled reporters during a 2012 briefing by denying the existence of government-to-government discussions between the USA and Iran.
The Fox News reporter saw fit to look up the video record of his earlier exchange because of its bearing on the controversy that emerged last month about the administration’s handling of the Iran nuclear negotiations, after it was revealed that Deputy National Security Advisor Ben Rhodes had deliberately shaped a narrative of Iranian “moderation” and conveyed it to the public via media outlets that he described as an “echo chamber”. “This is a good example of that”.
The Obama administration is facing a wave of angry criticism after the State Department confirmed it deleted parts of a video showing the administration had lied about the Iran nuclear deal.
CNN’s Wolf Blitzer was speaking with White House communications chief Jen Psaki Friday on The Situation Room.
The omission is “troubling”, Royce said, “given that the video in question dealt with the hugely consequential nuclear negotiations”.
FILE – House Oversight and Government Reform Committee Chairman Jason Chaffetz, R-Utah, wants the secretary of state to provide details about who made and received the request to delete the video segment and when and how it was restored. Not because we don’t want to have that conversation with you, Wolf, but because that means all parties are weighing in and becomes a public debate instead of a private negotiation that, as you know from covering these type of negotiations for years, is often needed in order to make progress.
According to The Washington Free Beacon, House Speaker Paul Ryan also called for the administration to investigate who ordered the edit. For opponents of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action and the overall White House policy on Iran, this can be expected to be treated as another piece of evidence demonstrating a pattern of public deception.
On Thursday, a department spokesman said that the inquiry, carried out by the department’s Office of the Legal Adviser, had run into a dead end.
He added that if more information came to light, the department would consider it.
But the Wall Street Journal notes that on Wednesday, the department’s current spokesperson, John Kirby acknowledged that the deletion had been made intentionally, although it was apparently unclear on whose order.
“We have pulled on this particular thread as far as we can go”, Toner said Thursday.
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“We are not going to question their memory”, he added.
