🚀 go-pugleaf

WASHINGTON - An odd-looking Canadian coin with a bright red flower was the 
culprit behind the U.S. Defence Department's false espionage warning earlier 
this year, The Associated Press has learned.
The odd-looking - but harmless - "poppy coin" was so unfamiliar to 
suspicious U.S. Army contractors travelling in Canada that they filed 
confidential espionage accounts about them. The worried contractors 
described the coins as "anomalous" and "filled with something man-made that 
looked like nano-technology," according to once-classified U.S. government 
reports and e-mails obtained by the AP.

The silver-coloured 25-cent piece features the red image of a poppy - 
Canada's flower of remembrance - inlaid over a maple leaf. The unorthodox 
quarter is identical to the coins pictured and described as suspicious in 
the contractors' accounts.

The supposed nano-technology actually was a conventional protective coating 
the Royal Canadian Mint applied to prevent the poppy's red colour from 
rubbing off. The mint produced nearly 30 million such quarters in 2004 
commemorating Canada's 117,000 war dead.

 "It did not appear to be electronic (analog) in nature or have a power 
source," wrote one U.S. contractor, who discovered the coin in the cup 
holder of a rental car. "Under high power microscope, it appeared to be 
complex consisting of several layers of clear, but different material, with 
a wire like mesh suspended on top."
The confidential accounts led to a sensational warning from the Defence 
Security Service, an agency of the Defence Department, that mysterious coins 
with radio frequency transmitters were found planted on U.S. contractors 
with classified security clearances on at least three separate occasions 
between October 2005 and January 2006 as the contractors travelled through 
Canada.

One contractor believed someone had placed two of the quarters in an outer 
coat pocket after the contractor had emptied the pocket hours earlier. "Coat 
pockets were empty that morning and I was keeping all of my coins in a 
plastic bag in my inner coat pocket," the contractor wrote.

But the Defence Department subsequently acknowledged that it could never 
substantiate the espionage alarm that it had put out and launched the 
internal review that turned up the true nature of the mysterious coin.

Meanwhile, in Canada, senior intelligence officials expressed annoyance with 
the American spy-coin warnings as they tried to learn more about the oddball 
claims.

"That story about Canadians planting coins in the pockets of defence 
contractors will not go away," Luc Portelance, now deputy director for the 
Canadian Security Intelligence Service, wrote in a January e-mail to a 
subordinate. "Could someone tell me more? Where do we stand and what's the 
story on this?"

Others in Canada's spy service also were searching for answers. "We would be 
very interested in any more detail you may have on the validity of the 
comment related to the use of Canadian coins in this manner," another 
intelligence official wrote in an e-mail. "If it is accurate, are they 
talking industrial or state espionage? If the latter, who?" The identity of 
the e-mail's recipient was censored.

Intelligence and technology experts were flabbergasted over the warning when 
it was first publicized earlier this year. The warning suggested that such 
transmitters could be used surreptitiously to track the movements of people 
carrying the coins.

"I thought the whole thing was preposterous, to think you could tag an 
individual with a coin and think they wouldn't give it away or spend it," 
said H. Keith Melton, a leading intelligence historian.

But Mr. Melton said the Army contractors properly reported their suspicions. 
"You want contractors or any government personnel to report anything 
suspicious," he said. "You can't have the potential target evaluating 
whether this was an organized attack or a fluke."

The Defence Security Service disavowed its warning about spy coins after an 
international furor, but until now it has never disclosed the details behind 
the embarrassing episode. The U.S. said it never substantiated the 
contractors' claims and performed an internal review to determine how the 
false information was included in a 29-page published report about espionage 
concerns.

The Defence Security Service never examined the suspicious coins, 
spokeswoman Cindy McGovern said. "We know where we made the mistake," she 
said. "The information wasn't properly vetted. While these coins aroused 
suspicion, there ultimately was nothing there."

A numismatist consulted by the AP, Dennis Pike of Canadian Coin & Currency 
near Toronto, quickly matched a grainy image and physical descriptions of 
the suspect coins in the contractors' confidential accounts to the 25-cent 
poppy piece.

"It's not uncommon at all," Mr. Pike said. He added that the coin's 
protective coating glows peculiarly under ultraviolet light. "That may have 
been a little bit suspicious," he said.

Some of the U.S. documents the AP obtained were classified "Secret/Noforn," 
meaning they were never supposed to be viewed by foreigners, even America's 
closest allies. The government censored parts of the files, citing national 
security reasons, before turning over copies under the U.S. Freedom of 
Information Act.

Nothing in the documents - except the reference to nanotechnology - 
explained how the contractors' accounts evolved into a full-blown warning 
about spy coins with radio frequency transmitters. Many passages were 
censored, including the names of contractors and details about where they 
worked and their projects.

But there were indications the accounts should have been taken lightly. Next 
to one blacked-out sentence was this warning: "This has not been confirmed 
as of yet."

The Canadian intelligence documents, which also were censored, were turned 
over to the AP for $5 under that country's Access to Information Act. Canada 
cited rules for protecting against subversive or hostile activities to 
explain why it censored the papers.

  a.. Socrates taught his students that the pursuit of truth can only begin 
once
  they start to question and analyze every belief that they ever held dear. 
If
  a certain belief passes the tests of evidence, deduction, and logic, it
  should be kept. If it doesn't, the belief should not only be discarded, 
but
  the thinker must also then question why he was led to believe the 
erroneous