Not Acceptable': CNN Anchor Excoriates State Department Over 'Deliberate' Video Edit

CNN anchor Jake Tapper blasted the State Department on Thursday, saying it's "not acceptable" to leave alone what even the department's own spokesman John Kirby admitted was "deliberate" editing of a damning admission by former spokeswoman Jen Psaki on the status of U.S nuclear talks with Iran.

Kirby admitted on Wednesday that the deletion of a 2013 exchange between then-spokeswoman Jen Psaki and Fox News chief Washington correspondent James Rosen was not a "glitch," as one State Department official claimed last month, but a "deliberate request" to remove the footage from the State Department's website and YouTube channel.

Image source: C-SPAN

The exchange in question shows Rosen asking Psaki in 2013 if it was the State Department’s policy to “lie” in order to achieve certain outcomes when doing so is advantageous to international negotiations.

Psaki responded by saying, "I think there are times where diplomacy needs privacy in order to progress. This is a good example of that." That exchange, as Rosen reported for Fox News in May 2016, had been deleted from the State Department's video archive on its website and its official YouTube channel.

But even after Kirby's stunning admission, Tapper challenged any assertion that it would be alright for the State Department to simply move on from the issue, without answering more questions.

"The Obama administration needs to understand that it's not acceptable just to leave this where it is," Tapper said. "Just as the public has the right to know the truth, we have a right to know who lied to us, and why."

"We have a right to know who lied to us — and why," CNN's @jaketapper says of @StateDept's edited video: https://t.co/LQiu7n8BtM

— Tré Goins-Phillips (@tregp) June 2, 2016

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