John Sexton:
The State Department really was the perfect place for Hillary Clinton. It shares her values, things like hiding the truth, modified limited hangouts and making up cover stories. And of course, claiming it’s no big deal when you get caught in a lie about your previous lie. Fox News reports:
The State Department, in a stunning admission, acknowledged Wednesday that officials intentionally deleted several minutes of video footage from a 2013 press briefing, where a top spokeswoman seemed to acknowledge misleading the press over the Iran nuclear deal.
“There was a deliberate request, this was not a glitch,” State Department official John Kirby acknowledged on Wednesday, adding they don’t know who made the request.
Kirby had a whole long statement on this in which he said, “a specific request was made to excise that portion of the briefing.” He added, “We do not know who made the request to edit the video or why it was made.”
So three weeks ago the Department said the missing video was a glitch. Today they say it was deliberate but don’t know who requested it. It should go without saying that this is also, almost certainly, a lie. They may not have a signed document asking for the deletion, but someone knows who it was. Probably only a handful of people could ask for and get something like that done. They just don’t want to say who did it because that could result in real consequences, something the State Department tries to avoid.
In case you’ve forgotten the details of this story here’s the short version (longer version is here). Back in December 2013 State Department spokesperson Jen Psaki admitted her predecessor had misled (i.e. lied to) a reporter who asked about the administration’s involvement in direct negotiations with Iran. So there was a lie and then later an admission from Psaki. The admission was made during the regular press briefing, video of which winds up on You Tube and on the State Department’s own website. That admission from Psaki is what mysteriously disappeared.
When Fox News noticed the missing video a few weeks ago the Department claimed it was a computer glitch. And today we learn that was also not true. It wasn’t a mistake. Anyone looking at the edit could tell it wasn’t a glitch right away. They lied again.
Why would they bother? Because this was a much bigger story a few weeks ago. In the infamous NY Times profile of Ben Rhodes, one controversy was the White House’s claim that negotiations were based on the election of a moderate president in Iran. In fact, negotiations had been going on for a year already, it’s just that, early on, the negotiations were done in secret. In his written defense, Ben Rhodes even claimed the White House had admitted the earlier negotiations with Iran. What Rhodes did not say is that they first lied about it for months.