When CIA Director David Petraeus handed in his resignation in response to an FBI investigation, it was the end of his short stint in intelligence but the beginning of a long list of questions that need to be answered. 

Right now, those questions chiefly revolve around when the FBI first knew about Petraeus’ affair and how long they might have covered up what they knew (and why). 

For example, did they know these things before the election? If so, did someone sit on the information to keep further scandal from hitting Obama’s reelection effort? 

Moreover, if they knew before the election, did Petraeus know it? In other words, was he complicit in keeping it concealed until after the election?

These are not allegations. They are viable questions that need to be raised in light of reports like the one in that says the FBI discovered Petraeus’s affair “during the course of an unrelated security investigation.” 

How long ago did that investigation take place?

Some sources claim that an FBI probe into Petraeus’s relationship to his biographer found “no criminal acts had been committed.” Law enforcement officials told NBC News there was little chance charges would be brought against the woman, Paula Broadwell. 

Therefore, if neither Petraeus nor his confessed mistress apparently committed any crime and the affair was not known by the press, what prompted him to suddenly resign so soon after the election? Was someone inside the administration muscling him — threatening to leak the affair? If so, why? 

These questions need to be answered, especially in light of Petraeus’s impending testimony on the Benghazi scandal. The American people are clamoring for answers on the death of Ambassador Chris Stevens and others. And if a personal moral failing rather than a criminal act is the official reason why the general cannot testify, the whole affair carries the stench of a cover-up.