Photograph by Echorouk Elyaoumi/AP Photo

Men look at the wreckage of a vehicle near Ain Amenas, Algeria. Algerian bomb squads scouring a gas plant where Islamist militants took dozens of foreign workers hostage found “numerous” new bodies on Jan. 20, 2013 as they searched for explosive traps left behind by the attackers, a security official said, a day after a bloody raid ended the four-day siege of the remote desert refinery.

The Abdallah Azzam Brigades, a militant organization based in Lebanon and the Arabian Peninsula, is a bad, bad group of terrorists.

So bad, in fact, that the U.S. has officially declared them a terrorist organization – for the second time in eight months.

The State Department today issued a press release stating that the brigade had been named a Foreign Terrorist Organization and a Specially Designated Global Terrorist group. It was the same media note, word-for-word, that the department issued first on May 24. The State Department didn’t respond to queries about why the designation was released again today.

The Abdallah Azzam Brigades claimed responsibility for a July 2010 attack on a Japanese-owned oil tanker in the Strait of  Hormuz. They’re also blamed for launching rocket attacks on Israelis from inside Lebanon. The State Department’s release said the group in 2010 had “expressed interest in kidnapping U.S. and British tourists in the Arabian Peninsula.”

The designations prohibit providing material support or resources to, or engaging in transactions with the group. It also freezes any property of the group in the U.S. or under the control of U.S. persons.

The administration must be paying heightened attention to terrorist groups operating in the Middle East and the Arabian Peninsula, especially after recent attacks in North Africa at a gas field in Algeria and at U.S. government facilities in Benghazi, Libya.

Still, it’s unclear why the U.S. re-issued an old release.

Maybe the Abdallah Azzam Brigades didn’t get the first memo.

Original post is Terrorists Tagged Twice by State — In Case They Didn’t Get the Memo by Political Capital.

Photograph by Ouahab Hebbat/AP Photo

Algerian men look at national newspapers headlining the terrorist attack and kidnapping in Amenas at a news stand in Algiers, on Jan. 17, 2013.

In the aftermath of a bruising partisan battle over what the Obama administration knew about an extremist attack in Benghazi, Libya, and when it knew it, officials are rationing their words for a new crisis in Algeria.

White House Press Secretary Jay Carney condemned “in the strongest terms a terrorist attack” on a remote gas field in Algeria, where the Algerian government said militants took dozens of foreign hostages yesterday, reportedly in retaliation for a French military operation against armed extremists in neighboring Mali.

Beyond saying that “the best information we have at this time” is that Americans are among those taken hostage, Carney wouldn’t elaborate on what more the U.S. government knows, or even when the White House learned about an Algerian government operation today to rescue the hostages. The State Department and Defense Department were equally reticent in their briefings today.

Carney admitted to journalists that he didn’t want to say something that could come back to bite him or the administration. “This is a fluid situation. I wouldn’t want to say something that turned out not to be true, so I’ll leave it at that,” Carney said.

He joked with one reporter that she knew hat he was talking about, prompting knowing laughter in the press room.

No one in Washington has forgotten the bitter partisan aftermath of the Benghazi tragedy. Although President Barack Obama referred to the attack as “an act of terror” twice in the two days after the attack, other administration officials - including Carney – said the U.S. had no evidence it was a pre-planned attack.

It was talking points based on preliminary intelligence – which turned out to be incorrect — that sank the chances of Susan Rice, U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations, a trusted advisor of President Barack Obama, to be nominated for secretary of state. At the behest of the White House, Rice appeared on Sunday television talk shows several days after the Benghazi killings, and described the attack as appearing to have started with protests over an offensive YouTube video.

Benghazi wasn’t the first time the administration briefed the media on initial reports that turned out to be incorrect. In May 2011, Carney was forced to revise the administration’s account of the raid that killed Osama bin Laden in Pakistan.

John Brennan, Obama’s counter-terrorism adviser and his choice to be the next head of the CIA, initially told reporters that the al-Qaeda chief was armed, and that his wife had rushed at a Navy SEAL and tried to shield him from bullets. When setting the record straight, Carney said at the time: “What is true” is that “we provided a great deal of information with great haste.”

In refraining from saying too much about an evolving crisis this time, the administration seems to be taking the lessons of the messaging missteps after Abbottabad and Benghazi to heart.
 

Original post is Obama Administration Rations Words — Algerian Terrorism Post-Benghazi by Political Capital.