State Department to investigate mysterious internal deletion of Iran deal footage

The State Department is reversing course and said it will now investigate the mysterious deletion of a reference to the Iran deal negotiations from a 2013 YouTube video of the press briefing.

Spokesman Mark Toner said Wednesday that despite denials the department would examine who was responsible for deleting the eight minutes of archived video from the website, given interest from Secretary of State John Kerry and the media, Foggy Bottom would investigate further.

“We're going to continue to look at additional troves of information in an effort to find out, again, what happened,” Toner said. “That is basically because the secretary said he wants to dive deeper into this, look more into what happened, and try to get to the bottom of what happened.”

The disappearing footage was a back-and-forth between then-State Department Spokeswoman Jen Psaki and a Fox News reporter about the nuclear negotiations with Iran, which eventually resulted in the deal reached in July 2015. Both Psaki and Marie Harf, the deputy spokeswoman at the time, deny having issued an order to delete the footage, which has been restored to the YouTube video.

State Department press briefings are held daily and live streamed on video, with the recording and transcripts posted online afterward. A technician, who has remained anonymous, said someone from the department public affairs office called on the same day the Dec. 2, 2013 briefing took place to order the footage be removed from YouTube.

Toner said the investigation would look at “all the relevant people who were occupying leadership positions” at the time. Media have criticized the State Department for not yet examining phone records to see who may have placed the call ordering the edit, or investigating whether an email trail referencing the incident exists.

“We haven't gone through all the e-mails,” Toner said. “We're continuing to do that.”

The House Oversight Committee is also investigating the matter and has requested Kerry testify.

This story was originally published June 8, 2016 at 5:39 PM with the headline "State Department to investigate mysterious internal deletion of Iran deal footage."