The New Intelligence Scrutiny

Intelligence agencies, especially the Americans', have been under a lot of pressure in the past few years over their perceived failures to stop bad things from happening to good people.

In this new era, nothing suspicious goes unreported, and everything that is not exactly as expected is considered suspicious. And the fear runs deep - check out this story about how U.S. Army contractors in Canada found one of our commemorative quarters and how it turned into a warning from the Defence Department about Canadian 'spy coins'.

It's a pretty hilarious read. In 2004 the Royal Canadian Mint produced 30 million quarters with a red coloured poppy on it to honour Canada's 117,000 war dead. When the Americans found one it set off a series of espionage reports. Previously classified documents show that they called the coins "anomalous" and "filled with something manmade that looked like nanotechnology". Nanotechnology!

"It did not appear to be electronic [analog] in nature or have a power source" "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 U.S. 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."

They didn't get these coins in their change, they were planted!

Meanwhile, exasperated Canadians were unable to get the Americans to listen to them. ""That story about Canadians planting coins in the pockets of defence contractors will not go away," wrote Luc Portelance, now deputy director for the Canadian Security Intelligence Service."

And seriously folks, if we were going to make a covert electronic tracking spy coin - I don't think we'd make it stand out by sticking a big red flower on it. Or maybe we were distracting you with them while our real spy pennies got past your impenetrable wall of security.

2004: The year of red quarters in Canada