RED CENT SPARKED SPY ALERTBy TED BRIDIS
May 8, 2007 -- WASHINGTON - An odd-looking Canadian quarter with a bright red flower was the culprit behind a false espionage warning from the Defense Department about coins with radio-frequency .
The harmless "poppy quarter" was so unfamiliar to suspicious U.S. Army contractors traveling in Canada that they filed confidential espionage accounts about them. The contractors described the coins as "filled with something manmade that looked like nanotechnology," according to once-classified U.S. government reports and e-mails obtained by The Associated Press.
The 25-cent piece features the red image of a poppy, Canada's flower of remembrance.
The supposed nanotechnology on the coin actually was a protective coating the
Royal Canadian Mint applied to the poppy. 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 contractor, who found 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 accounts led to a sensational warning from the Defense Security Service, an agency of the Defense Department, that coins with transmitters were found planted on U.S. contractors with classified security clearances on at least three occasions between October 2005 and January 2006 as the contractors traveled through Canada.
The Defense Department subsequently acknowledged it could never substantiate the espionage warning, but until now, it has never disclosed the details behind the embarrassing episode.
The story heremila_
Posted 05/08/2007 8:21 pm
