Poppy quarter led to spy coin warnings

Last Updated: Monday, May 7, 2007 | 7:37 PM ET

The Associated Press

The surprise explanation behind the U.S. government's sensational but false warnings about mysterious Canadian spy coins is the harmless poppy quarter, the world's first colourized coin.

The odd-looking coins were so unfamiliar to suspicious U.S. army contractors travelling in Canada that they filed confidential espionage accounts about them.

The worried contractors described the coins as "anomalous" and "filled with something manmade that looked like nanotechnology," said once-classified U.S. government reports and e-mails.

The 25-cent piece features the red image of a poppy inlaid over a maple leaf. The quarter is identical to the coins pictured and described as suspicious in the contractors' accounts.

The supposed nanotechnology actually was a conventional protective coating the Royal Canadian Mint applied to prevent the poppy's red colour 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.

Poppy Coin Part of Massive Destabilization Plot

The UnAsssoaited Press

Washington DC According to an internal whistle blower calling herself William (Billie) Casey, an unnamed Intelligence Agency working with a second unnamed internal USA agency, in an attempt to destabilise the drug cartel econonmy in Asia had these conterfit coins produced. The two agencies contracted the Canadian mint to produce this drug money. William Casey, not her real name says, the theory was simple. The counterfit coins would be slipped into the local drug economies in massive quantities. Once in wide circulation it would be "leaked" that the coins where counterfit. The local economies would collapse and wipe out millions of dollars of ill gotten drug gains.

Unfortuantely the US dollar undermined by the current massive war efforts fell so far in value that the counterfit poppy coins started to increase in value, said Ms. Casey, not her real sex.

The two unnamed agencies moved quickly and bought up all the remaining counterfit coins. However with no place to store the coins they came to an agreement with the Canadian Mint. The Mint had been paid $10 million dollars to produce the coins. Circulation figures are still classified, but all the remaining uncirculated coins were discounted to the two agencies for half price, said Mr. Casey, who is still confused by sex.

The Canadian mint which was just about to ship the coins to the agencies head offices , 5600 Fishers Lane Rockville, Maryland 20857, stepped in and for one third of the original contracted price agreed not to ship the coins and dispose of them.

Mr. Casey would not put a dollar figure on the covert opperation but when pressed he repeatly winked his right eye each time a dollar figure was announced. At 10:15 PM his winking was interrupted by a telephone call, a number of clicks and whirls such as a camera makes when film is being advanced. The last number Mr. Casey winked over was $100 million US. At this time two Russians broke through the door shouting the vodka was spiked with Plutonium.

The Canadian Mint quietly slipped the coins into circulation in Canada where no one noticed them until US defence constractors inadvertently drew attention to them.

Previously the Canadian mint had experimented with adding mood stones to the centre of the Canadian coin affectionately called the "Loonie." The intent was to attempt to gage what sort of mood or what Canadian consumers had on their minds. Turns out Canadians have only one thing on their minds - hockey and are always in the mood for more.