Community | December 03, 2009 | 32 comments

Pentagon: Suspected Canadian 'spy coins' caper emails released under FOIA

source: http://rawstory.com/2009/12/pentagon-emails-reveal-suspicion-canada-bad-guys-knows/comment-p...

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SleepDirt
The Pentagon exhibits a paranoid reaction to a Canadian-issued commemorative twenty-five cent coin with a unusual and terrifying red flower.
Is that a real poppy, or is that a secret socialist spy chip?

That's my two bits....

***

In sensational warnings that circulated publicly in late 2006 and early 2007, the Pentagon's Defense Security Service said coins with radio transmitters were found planted on U.S. Army contractors with classified security clearances on at least three occasions between October 2005 and January 2006 as the contractors traveled through Canada.

In January 2007, the government abruptly reversed itself and said the warnings weren't true. But the case remained a mystery until months later, when AP learned that the flap had been caused by suspicions over the odd-looking Canadian "poppy" quarter with a bright red flower. The silver-colored 25-cent piece features the red image of a poppy — Canada's flower of war remembrance — inlaid on a maple leaf.

What suspicious contractors believed to be "nanotechnology" on the coins actually was a 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.

The Pentagon turned over the latest e-mails from inside its Office of the Undersecretary for Defense for Intelligence nearly two years after the AP requested them under the Freedom of Information Act. Many of the e-mails were censored over what the Pentagon said was national security and personal privacy.

http://rawstory.com/2009/12/pentagon-emails-reveal-suspicion-canada-bad-guys-kno...
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32 comments // Pentagon: Suspected Canadian 'spy coins' caper emails released under FOIA

  • artemis6
  • EdJoyProductions
  • SleepDirt
  • div
    • 0
      div  

    • Lol. Dude, we do not have enough money for that shit. It's called color. Fear not the color, American neighbors. It cometh in peace.

    • 2 years ago
  • Elligirl
  • Frozen_Northerner
    • 0
      Frozen_Northerner  

    • Hey Tommytripper - As a retired member of the Prince Edward & Hasting militia, you can save me the lecture. I am well versed in the meaning and tradition of the red poppy!

      FYI: It has nothing to due with the Napoleonic era. It was immortalized in a poem written by a Canadian doctor, Lt. Colonel John McCrae, on May 3, 1915 the day after he witnessed the death of his friend Lt. Alexis Helmer during the Second Battle of Ypres. Published in the magazine Punch, it was then used as part of the recruitment drive by the War Office.

    • 2 years ago
  • tommytripper
    • 0
      tommytripper  
    • Frozen_Northerner:

      maybe you should look up your history again or for the first time?

      yes the poem was writen and yes after that is when canada adopted it.

      but the poppy's relation to soldiers and remeberance dates back to the Napoleonic era...

    • 2 years ago
  • Frozen_Northerner
    • 0
      Frozen_Northerner  
    • Frozen_Northerner:

      Tommytripper - Thought this thread was containing it's relevance to Canada. You must be referring to Lord MacCauley's 1855 writings about the Battle of Landen, 1693.

      "The next summer the soil, fertilised by twenty thousand corpses, broke forth into millions of poppies. The traveller who, on the road from Saint Tron to Tirlemont, saw that vast sheet of rich scarlet spreading from Landen to Neerwinden, could hardly help fancying that the figurative prediction of the Hebrew prophet was literally accomplished, that the earth was disclosing her blood, and refusing to cover the slain."

      1693 - Well before Confederation here in Canada.

    • 2 years ago
  • CalPal
    • 0
      CalPal  

    • Yes because of ALL the things America should be afraid of, the #1 fear is...

      Canada, the USA's best ally and trade partner, the mediator between the US and European talks, the peace-loving "bigger brother"...

      FEAR US ALL!!

    • 2 years ago
  • ryan8566
    • 0
      ryan8566  
    • CalPal:

      the lack of information (ignorance) Americans have about Canada is not because it is secret...history! the poppy, flanders field for Remembrance Day (not Veterans Day) is important. More importantly, Canada is America's largest trading partner, and yes, it DOES have an army which was one of the 1st to sign on after sept. 11th.
      Canadian soldiers joined the U.S. in the legal war after America was attacked, and the Canadian people saw their soldiers coming home in caskets.

    • 2 years ago
  • SleepDirt
  • shanklinmike
  • SleepDirt
  • sidewaysclyde
  • BoomChaka
    • 0
      BoomChaka  

    • In Flanders fields the poppies blow
      Between the crosses, row on row,
      That mark our place; and in the sky
      The larks, still bravely singing, fly
      Scarce heard amid the guns below.

      We are the Dead. Short days ago
      We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,
      Loved, and were loved, and now we lie
      In Flanders fields.

      Take up our quarrel with the foe:
      To you from failing hands we throw
      The torch; be yours to hold it high.
      If ye break faith with us who die
      We shall not sleep, though poppies grow
      In Flanders fields.

      — Lt.-Col. John McCrae (1872 - 1918)

      Do people seriously not know about the poppy in the US?

    • 2 years ago
  • rwahrens
    • 0
      rwahrens  
    • BoomChaka:

      Uh, different cultures, different traditions. No, many Americans do NOT know about your poppy tradition. To many Americans, poppies mean opium...and heroin.

      The christians here force us to use their cross to commemorate our war dead. After all, Scalia thinks it's a universal memorial to the dead...

    • 2 years ago
  • Progresshiv
    • 0
      Progresshiv  
    • BoomChaka:

      When I was a child in the 1950s we wore poppies on Veterans' Day to commemorate the U.S. war dead, but the tradition died during the Vietnam War and has not been revived. Now many people display little, magnetic bows on the trunks of their cars which say "Support the Troops." Notice that there is no mention of the dead, because that makes people uncomfortable in "modern" America.

    • 2 years ago
  • Frozen_Northerner
    • 0
      Frozen_Northerner  

    • Yeh right - next it is going to be hordes of Muslims screaming "Allah Akbar" as they stream down from Parliament Hill to the border.

      Actually if Canada wanted any secrets from the Pentagon it would be easier to just get them from the Israelis.

    • 2 years ago
  • greek1
    • 0
      greek1  

    • Money would be the worst place to plant a transmitter on me, it would just get passed on to the next guy almost immediately!

    • 2 years ago
  • good_stuff
    • 0
      good_stuff  

    • Yes, of course they would make spy coins that look drastically different from all the other coins. You should also be weary of the people with canadian accents that go around with a nametag that says "Foriegn Spy" on it.

    • 2 years ago
  • bailey78
    • 0
      bailey78  

    • let me think who was in charge back then? Oh yea ! it was bush and his cronies. I wonder what he was paranoid about. What do we have to fear fron Canada? They might invade us ? Hell do they even have an army? What are they going to do send in there tanks? do they even have tanks? Just what does Canada do any how? I think any one with any talent is already here . what will they do throw a snowball at us?

    • 2 years ago
  • KSirys
    • 0
      KSirys  
    • bailey78:

      come on Bailey, you're suggesting Canada can't do anything??? Don't you know that if they invade, they would make English language, the third spoken language!! that's scary enough!! lol... =D

    • 2 years ago
  • mindcruzer
  • bailey78
    • 0
      bailey78  
    • bailey78:

      Hey I think them crazy canucks are going to try something we have a chance of snow. Time to break out the heaters folks it's going to get cold down here in south texas. I hate the cold thats why I live here.

    • 2 years ago
  • Progresshiv
  • KSirys
  • SleepDirt
  • tommytripper
    • 0
      tommytripper  
    • SleepDirt:

      the flower is a poppy...

      it was adopted as a symbol of remembrance by Canada, and dates back to the Napoleonic era as a symbol to remember fallen soldiers in France...

      it is a part of Canadian culture, and a way we show, we still remember what our soldiers do and have done.

    • 2 years ago
  • mindcruzer
  • cynker
  • asherp
  • SleepDirt
    • 0
      SleepDirt  
    • Image
    • SleepDirt:

      I know, I know. I was giving you my best Glenn Beck impression. OK, I won't quit my day job.

      In fact, I happen to love poppies and not just for the heroin. I took this picture in LA.

      In Flanders fields the poppies blow
      Between the crosses, row on row,
      That mark our place; and in the sky
      The larks, still bravely singing, fly
      Scarce heard amid the guns below.

      We are the Dead. Short days ago
      We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,
      Loved and were loved, and now we lie
      In Flanders fields.

      Take up our quarrel with the foe:
      To you from failing hands we throw
      The torch; be yours to hold it high.
      If ye break faith with us who die
      We shall not sleep, though poppies grow
      In Flanders fields.

    • 2 years ago
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