Failure to sign a formal separation agreement can have dire consequences for rank-and-file State Department employees, an agency whistleblower told The Daily Caller.
That is in stark contrast to what happens to top-level officials such as former Sec. of State Hillary Clinton if they refuse to sign the separation form, OF-109.
Ramifications for lower-level State Department employees include the withholding of retirement benefits and possible investigations conducted by the agency into why employees declined to sign the form, whistleblower Richard Higbie says.
By signing OF-109, agency employees affirm that they have turned over all records — classified or unclassified; emails or physical documents — pertaining to official government business.
Whether or not Clinton — who used a private email account hosted on a private server to conduct official business — signed the document when she left office in Feb. 2013 was finally answered on Tuesday by State Department spokeswoman Jen Psaki.
Psaki said that it does not appear that Clinton signed the document when she left the agency.
She added that it does not appear that Clinton’s predecessors, Condoleezza Rice and Colin Powell, signed the exit document either.
Though signing OF-109 is listed in the Foreign Affairs Manual as one of the requirements outgoing employees must fulfill before leaving the agency, Psaki sought to downplay the issue.
“We’re not aware of any penalty for not signing it,” she told reporters. “It’s not a violation of any rule.”i would say there must not have been a penalty especially since the Bush Secretary's did not sign them and for years we have heard to noise about them not doing so. which leaves the question if never enforced on another party's officials two so far can they go after Hilay without penalizing their own violators? i'm sure they think they can but they like usual made to much of it to be ignored when it comes to others who may or may not have violated exit laws.
so busy trying to pin Benghazi back on the board they as usual did no research and entered their latest folly half cocked guess they never read the contract, how much other stuff has passed by them that by their own admission they never read. so is another homespun republican scandal been rebuked?
