State Department: Stop asking us about the Benghazi attack

Josh Rogin @ The Cable:

The State Department told reporters Friday afternoon that it won’t answer any more questions about the Sept. 11 attack on the consulate in Benghazi that killed four Americans until the investigation into the incident is complete.

“I’m going to frustrate all of you, infinitely, by telling you that now that we have an open FBI investigation on the death of these four Americans, we are not going to be in a position to talk at all about what the U.S. government may or may not be learning about how any of this this happened — not who they were, not how it happened, not what happened to Ambassador Stevens, not any of it — until the Justice Department is ready to talk about the investigation that’s its got,” State Department spokeswoman Victorian Nuland told reporters late Friday afternoon.

“So I’m going to send to the FBI for those kinds of questions and they’re probably not going to talk to you about it,” she said.

All aspects of the attack, including what led up to it, its causes, the identity of the perpetrators, and the circumstances surrounding the death of Amb. Chris Stevens and the other three Americans,are off limits for reporters.

The new policy leaves many questions about the Benghazi attack unanswered, potentially for a long time, such as the identity of the attackers, whether they were connected to protests earlier in the day in Cairo, what were the exact circumstances and cause of Stevens’s death, whether the administration had indications of the threat beforehand, and whether the consulate’s security was adequate or not.

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