ABLE DANGER GOES TO CHINA!....The Able Danger story hasn't yet provided us with much fun, so I'm happy to report that silly season leaks are finally starting to emerge from anonymous sources deep in the bowels of (presumably) the Pentagon. These sources tell the New York Post that contractor J.D. Smith, the man who supposedly ID'd Mohamed Atta for the Able Danger program, was fired after making some wee errors in a different data mining program:

Sources said the private contractors, using sophisticated computer software that sifts through massive amounts of raw data to establish patterns, came up with a chart of Chinese strategic and business connections in the U.S.

The program wrongly tagged [Condoleezza] Rice, who at the time was an adviser to then-candidate George W. Bush, and former Defense Secretary William Perry by linking their associations at Stanford, along with their contacts with Chinese leaders, sources said.

The program also spat out scores of names of other former government officials with legitimate ties to China, as well as prominent American businessmen.

Let's play the leak-meta-analysis game! Why was this information leaked? Presumably to discredit Smith. But why discredit Smith? Because he's the guy who identified Atta. If Smith FUBARed the China project this badly, it provides the Army with an excellent justification for ignoring his al-Qaeda work as well.

But why does the Army need a ready-made excuse for ignoring Smith's al-Qaeda work? Probably because he really did identify Atta, and pretty soon they're going to have to admit it. The mills of the Pentagon grind slow, but they grind exceeding fine....