The Most Transparent Administration Ever

The State Department acknowledged Wednesday that someone in its public affairs bureau made a “deliberate” request that several minutes of tape be cut from the video of a 2013 press briefing in which a reporter asked if the administration had lied about secret talks with Iran.

The embarrassing admission by State Department spokesman John Kirby came three weeks after another spokesperson insisted that a “glitch” had caused the gap, discovered only last month by the reporter whose questioning had mysteriously disappeared.

  WaPo

Yeah, yeah, the government is deceitful. We know that. But what I'm wondering is why the video was edited so badly. Surely it was digital, so why was there a white flash?

“The recipient of the call doesn’t remember anything other than the caller, the individual who called this technician, was passing on a request from someone else within the public affairs bureau,” Kirby said, explaining the faulty memory by adding, “This happened three years ago.”

Oh sure. The perfect excuse. I don't remember. It happens a lot.  Lots of people call me to fix tapes.  I do it on a regular basis.  Three years!  How could I possibly remember that?

At the first, in February, he asked then-spokesperson Victoria Nuland if bilateral talks with Iran, at the time still secret, were underway. She replied that “on a government-to-government level, no.”

Then in December, after the secret talks became public, [Fox News correspondent James] Rosen returned to the issue with Nuland’s successor, Jen Psaki.

“Is it the policy of the State Department, where the preservation or the secrecy of secret negotiations is concerned, to lie in order to achieve that goal?” Rosen asked.

Psaki seemed to concur, replying: “James, I think there are times where diplomacy needs privacy in order to progress. This is a good example of that.”

But when Rosen called up the video, he was surprised to find that the entire exchange with Psaki, several minutes long, was missing. He asked the State Department about it, and it said that it had found an intact video in a repository and restored it.

Okay, you got us. We'll put it back. WTF?   They knew better than to remove it from official docs, so they scrubbed public access.

“Genuinely, we think it was a glitch,” said Elizabeth Trudeau, director of the press office, in a May 10 briefing.

No you don't. Jesus, the ridiculous lies a person has to tell when they work for the government.

According to Kirby, who succeeded Psaki last year, the Rosen section was edited out the day Psaki made the statement, after a technician was called by someone within the press office.

Or, as it is more appropriately known, the department of propaganda.

Kirby said there were no rules specifically barring this type of scrubbing. He said new rules would prevent it from happening again.

“My focus is on the future and making sure we have the right rules in place,” he said.

For when Donald Trump takes office.

It occurs to me that the most transparent administration ever sure has changed State spokespersons a lot.  Take a look at this list.  Which administrations had how many different spokesperons?  What does that tell us?  Anything?  I hope Obama can make it through the rest of his term without having to get a new one.  Unless, of course, his goal is to outnumber Regan.

....but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.