The freakout over the new Canadian coin

By one of our intelligence agencies exposes more than their doofus clown suits and red noses. The fear that the odd little flower was a new nano-tech device indicates extreme envy as well. (Why the hell hasn't the CIA thought of that?!! Bugging the money!)



Chester at Vanity Press has more:

WASHINGTON -- An odd-looking Canadian coin with a bright red flower was the culprit behind the U.S. Defense 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 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 silver-colored 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 color from rubbing off. The mint produced nearly 30 million such quarters in 2004 commemorating Canada's 117,000 war dead.

We gotta keep an eye on those sneaky Canadians. They must hate us for our freedoms....