Is Your Money Watching You?

We brought you word of the report made by the US Defense Department about contractors complaining of being watched by Canadian coins. We brought you word of the rather shamefaced withdrawal of the report as well. Now comes word that the reason the contractors got suspicious is because they found several Canadian "poppy quarters". These coins featured a red-colored image of a poppy and were issued in 2004 to commemorate Canadian war dead.

WASHINGTON - An odd-looking Canadian quarter with a bright red flower was the culprit behind a false espionage warning from the Defense Department about mysterious coins with radio frequency transmitters, The Associated Press has learned.

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 worried contractors described the coins as "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 on the coin 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.

Well, that clears that up. And no wonder the contractors were suspicious. You have to admit there is something odd about the coin.