The State Department was clever to join the revelation that former Secretary Hillary Clinton did not sign a separation form known as an OF-109 with the (unsolicited) addition that Republican predecessors Condoleezza Rice and Colin Powell didn’t sign the form, either. (State Department spokeswoman Jen Psaki said Tuesday she had no information on Democratic predecessor Madeleine Albright.)
The Clinton-Rice-Powell news is exculpatory for Clinton on the very narrow slice of the Clinton email affair that was the OF-109 question. If the predecessors had signed the form and Clinton didn’t, one could suspect that Clinton’s non-signature had something to do with her desire to keep her secret email system under wraps. But since the predecessors didn’t sign either, no conclusion can be drawn.
Still, the news does not end even the narrow OF-109 question. Does everyone else in the State Department have to sign the form, just not the secretary of state? Psaki said she did not know. “I just don’t want to characterize how common practice it is,” she told reporters.
The was-anyone-else-required-to-sign question is important in light of the fact that Hillary Clinton was not the only State Department employee in on her secret system. Psaki was asked about a Freedom of Information Act request from the Republican National Committee seeking documents on Clinton’s OF-109. “Do you know if the FOIA … includes Secretary Clinton’s chief of staff, Cheryl Mills, or deputy chief of staff Huma Abedin and Deputy Assistant Secretary Philippe Reines?” a reporter asked.
“I don’t have additional details on other individuals who may or may not have signed the form,” Psaki said.
Well, as it turns out, the RNC information request does seek documents on “Secretary Clinton and her senior advisers” and specifically lists Mills, Abedin, and Reines. “The American public deserves to know whether Secretary Clinton and her top aides complied with the same policy directive applicable to all other State Department employees,” RNC research director Raj Shah wrote in a letter to the State Department. So Psaki will now know that yes, other Clinton-era State Department officials are included on the RNC request.
The OF-109 scuffle, not hugely important in itself, does point to a larger issue in the Clinton email affair: Hillary Clinton is not the only one involved. Aides in the circle closest to Clinton (then and now) were in on the @clintonemail.com system and presumably communicated with Clinton — in a fashion completely removed from the State Department system — on issues that reached beyond yoga or Chelsea’s wedding. Has Clinton turned over all of those internal @clintonemail.com communications to the State Department?
And what about the House Select Committee on Benghazi? If it is unsatisfied with the cooperation, or lack of cooperation, it receives from Clinton, can it seek another path toward the information through Mills, Abedin, and Reines? The answer is pretty obviously yes.
So the one thing shown by the OF-109 episode is how far the Clinton email questions reach. After announcing Tuesday that neither Clinton, Rice, nor Powell had signed the form, Psaki was asked, “As far as you’re concerned, is this now case closed?” “I hope so,” said Psaki. But she must certainly know that it is not.
