The State Department announced Thursday, after a weeks-long review involving dozens of interviews, that it still does not know why several minutes of footage from a 2013 briefing were deleted from a public archive – leaving the department’s top spokesman on the defensive over the unusual incident.
(FOX)- “There’s no evidence to suggest [the edit] was made with the intent to conceal information from the public,” spokesman John Kirby said Thursday.
At the same time, he said they couldn’t rule out “nefarious” intent – but said the results of an extensive review were “inconclusive.”
The vague comments came as he announced the results of a “fact-finding review” into the deletion which apparently included interviews with more than 30 current and former employees and a review of emails and other documents.
The matter flared up more than two months ago when Kirby publicly acknowledged that an official had intentionally deleted video footage from a 2013 press briefing, where a former spokeswoman seemed to acknowledge misleading the press over the Iran nuclear deal.
“There was a deliberate request [to delete the footage] – this wasn’t a technical glitch,” Kirby said in June.
On Thursday, Kirby stood by the assessment that this was a deliberate edit, but couldn’t say why it was done.
“We may never know,” Kirby said, as he addressed tough questions from reporters.
At the 2013 briefing in question, then-spokeswoman Jen Psaki was asked by Fox News’ James Rosen about an earlier claim that no direct, secret talks were underway between the U.S. and Iran – when, in fact, they were.
Psaki at the time seemed to admit the discrepancy, saying: “There are times where diplomacy needs privacy in order to progress. This is a good example of that.”