Monday, May 07, 2007

Spies, spies - Everywhere!

A few months back there was a story about Canadian "spy" coins that were somehow slipped into the pockets of American defence contractors. Someone finally got to the bottom of this murky business. Here's a picture of the actual, secret agent:



Yes, that's right, it was the Remembrance Day commemorative quarter that sent US military contractors running for the protection of the Pentagon. According to The Guardian:

"The harmless ``poppy coin'' was so unfamiliar to suspicious U.S. Army contractors traveling 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 supposed nano-technology actually was a conventional protective coating the Royal Canadian Mint applied to prevent the poppy's red color 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.'"

Okay, I give, just what is the damned frequency, Kenneth?

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