State Department spokesman John Kirby today said that he was \u201cvery concerned\u201d about the disappearance of video from a December 2013 briefing in which Fox News reporter James Rosen pressed then-spokeswoman Jen Psaki about the administration\u2019s messaging regarding negotiations with Iran. About eight minutes of discussion, Rosen reported, mysteriously disappeared from the State Department\u2019s site and from the agency\u2019s YouTube page. In its place was a simple white flash.<\/p>\n
\u201cI say this as not just a spokesman for the department, but as the assistant secretary of state for public affairs \u2014 that I\u2019m very concerned by this. And I have every intention of making sure that we look into it thoroughly and try to get answers as best we can about what happened here,\u201d said Kirby.<\/p>\n
The vanished video has a complicated provenance. The short story: Rosen in February 2013 asked then-spokeswoman Victoria Nuland whether the United States was carrying on bilateral discussions with Iran and was told no. Ten months later, after it became clear that such discussions had indeed taken place, he asked Psaki this question:<\/p>\n
QUESTION: 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?<\/p>\n