Far be it from me to suggest that the US preoccupation with terrorism is reaching alarming heights of paranoia, but when the US Army suggests that Canadian currency is embedded with some kind of nanotechnology which Canadians were putting into the army officers’ pockets for espionage purposes, I think perhaps there really is something wrong.

(Associated Press) WASHINGTON — An odd-looking Canadian coin with a bright red flower was the culprit behind the U.S. Defence 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 travelling 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-coloured 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.

Oh, there’s more…