For weeks, Mayor Bill de Blasio was unwavering in his public statements: He would march in the Puerto Rican Day Parade in New York on June 11 even though it was giving a hero’s honor to a former leader of a bomb-planting Puerto Rican nationalist group.

It was up to the parade’s leadership to choose who was honored, Mr. de Blasio insisted, and he intended to march in tribute to the Puerto Rican people — “simple as that,” he said.

In fact, the mayor’s calculations in whether to march were far more involved, and on Monday, he admitted that his public statements were not completely forthright.

“You guys have asked me different questions,” Mr. de Blasio said Monday when asked about the militant, Oscar López Rivera, “and I had been diplomatic, let’s say, in the answers to those questions because I believed the parade committee was seriously trying to grapple with the issue, and I wanted to give them some space to do it.”