Fox News correspondent James Rosen recently pointed out that State Department video had edited out a 2013 question he asked about Iran negotiations. Here are the different answers it's given about Iran and about the missing video. (Gillian Brockell/The Washington Post) 
 
 Fox News correspondent James Rosen recently pointed out that State Department video had edited out a 2013 question he asked about Iran negotiations. Here are the different answers it's given about Iran and about the missing video. (Gillian Brockell/The Washington Post) 
 
 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. 
 
 “This wasn’t a technical glitch, this was a deliberate step to excise the video,” Kirby told reporters. 
 
 Kirby said he had not been able to learn who ordered the deletion, which appeared as a jarring, undisguised white flash on the archived video posted on the State Department’s website and in its YouTube video. 
 
 “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.” 
 
 The curious gap in an old video of a public briefing is not of the same ilk as the famous 18 1/2- minute gap in audio tapes of President Nixon’s Oval Office conversations during the Watergate coverup. The official written transcript of the State Department briefing always carried the full exchange. 
 
 But it is likely to further fuel controversy over the administration’s nuclear deal with Iran, coming amid allegations that the White House duped the press and misled Congress and foreign policy scholars about the Iran nuclear deal that was implemented in January. 
 
 The missing portion of the video came to light in early May when James Rosen of Fox News was preparing a report on White House communications advisor Ben Rhodes, who had boasted to a New York Times Magazine reporter of having created an “echo chamber” to market the Iran nuclear deal and undermine criticisms from opponents. The magazine story said the White House portrayed it as a result of a moderate being elected president of Iran in 2013, when in fact secret talks had been underway since 2011. 
 
 [Quiz: What do you actually know about the Iran nuclear talks?] 
 
 Rosen recalled having asked about the secret talks at State Department press briefings twice in 2013. 
 
 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, 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.” 
 
 [State Department insists a “glitch” caused video gap] 
 
 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. 
 
 “Genuinely, we think it was a glitch,” said Elizabeth Trudeau, director of the press office, in a May 10 briefing. 
 
 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. 
 
 “They learned that a specific request was made to excise that portion of that briefing,” he said. “We do not know who made the request to edit the video, or why it was made.” 
 
 Psaki, now White House communications director, denied it was her. 
 
 “I had no knowledge of nor would I have approved of any form of editing or cutting my briefing transcript on any subject while at the State Department,” Psaki said in a statement. “I believe deeply in providing the press as much information on important issues as possible.” 
 
 Doug Frantz, who was the assistant secretary for public affairs at the time, said he knew nothing of the episode. 
 
 “But I can assure that I would never have authorized removing anything from the public record and I would have forbidden anyone who worked for me in public affairs from deleting any material,” he said. 
 
 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. 
 
 Karen DeYoung contributed to this report. 
 
 Read more: 
 
 Obama’s foreign policy guru 
 
 Full text of the Iran nuclear deal 
 
 James Rosen: “Stunning” that State deleted my questions 
 
 Obama: Iran nuclear deal, prisoner release show the power of diplomacy ||||| The State Department, in a stunning admission, acknowledged Wednesday that an official 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 [to delete the footage] – this wasn’t a technical glitch,” State Department spokesman John Kirby said Wednesday, in admitting that an unidentified official had a video editor “excise” the segment. 
 
 The State Department had faced questions earlier this year over the block of missing tape from a December 2013 briefing. At that briefing, 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.” 
 
 However, Fox News later discovered the Psaki exchange was missing from the department’s official website and its YouTube channel. Eight minutes from the briefing, including the comments on the Iran deal, were edited out and replaced with a white-flash effect. 
 
 Officials initially suggested a "glitch" occurred. 
 
 But on Wednesday, current State Department spokesman Kirby said someone had censored the video intentionally. He said he couldn't find out who was responsible, but described such action as unacceptable. 
 
 While saying there were “no rules [or] regulations in place that prohibited” this at the time, Kirby said: "Deliberately removing a portion of the video was not and is not in keeping with the State Department's commitment to transparency and public accountability.” 
 
 Kirby said he learned that on the same day of the 2013 briefing, a video editor received a call from a State Department public affairs official who made "a specific request ... to excise that portion of the briefing." 
 
 Kirby says he has since ordered the original video restored on all platforms and asked the State Department's legal adviser to examine the matter. He said no further investigation will be made, primarily because no rules were in place against such actions. 
 
 Kirby said he has ordered new rules created to prevent a recurrence. 
 
 Speaking Thursday with Fox News, Kirby did not rule out looking further into who might have been behind the request, but said right now: “We just don’t know who made the request or why.” 
 
 Kirby also said Psaki, in the 2013 briefing, was not trying to say anybody at the department lied about the Iran deal. “We don’t lie,” he said. 
 
 One of the toughest congressional critics of the Iran deal, Republican Sen. Tom Cotton, called Thursday for the administration to find who was responsible. 
 
 “The Administration must start dealing in the truth. One place to start is to identify the official who ordered the manipulation of the video and impose appropriate discipline,” he said in a statement. 
 
 In a statement issued late Wednesday aftrnoon, Psaki, now White House Communications Director, said, "I had no knowledge of nor would I have approved of any form of editing or cutting my briefing transcript on any subject while at the State Department." 
 
 The Psaki footage took on new significance last month on the heels of a New York Times Magazine profile of Deputy National Security Adviser Ben Rhodes, who boasted of creating an “echo chamber” to sell the Iran deal. 
 
 Rhodes later claimed they did not mislead the public and “confirmed publicly” there were “discreet channels of communication established with Iran in 2012.” 
 
 Yet in a February 2013 briefing, then-State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland claimed there were no secret, direct talks with Iran at the time. It was Psaki’s explanation of that briefing, months later in December, that was later scrubbed from the footage archives. 
 
 Fox News’ James Rosen and Lucas Tomlinson and The Associated Press contributed to this report. ||||| Here are some suggestions for finding information on the U.S. Department of State website. 
 
 If you still cannot find something, Contact Us. Thank you for your interest.
– The State Department says a minutes-long exchange in which a reporter questioned whether officials lied about talks with Iran vanished from a 2013 press video in a cut it's now admitting was "deliberate." Spokesman John Kirby says an official in the public affairs bureau—he says he doesn't know who or why—called a technician on the same day the comments were made asking that eight minutes of footage be cut from the briefing, though a rep initially said the department believed a "glitch" was responsible, reports Fox News. The unknown caller apparently made the request on behalf of another official, Kirby says. The edit—made obvious by "a jarring, undisguised white flash," per the Washington Post—was only spotted last month by Fox reporter James Rosen, who was involved in the exchange. In February 2013, a State rep said talks with Iran weren't occurring "on a government-to-government level." After it was revealed that talks had been underway since 2011, Rosen asked spokeswoman Jen Psaki in December, "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?" She replied, "I think there are times where diplomacy needs privacy in order to progress. This is a good example of that." The "embarrassing" exchange remained in the official transcript but was scrubbed from the press video. Psaki denies she was the one to make the call—which actually wasn't against the rules. However, it "is not in keeping with the State Department's commitment to transparency and public accountability," says Kirby. New rules will now be put in place.