12/03/09

Pentagon e-mails suggest distrust over ally Canada

So that's why Janet Napolitano has been transferring border guards from the Southern border to the Northern border?

By TED BRIDIS

WASHINGTON (AP) - How much does the U.S. government really trust Canada? Maybe less than you think.

Espionage warnings from the Defense Department caused an international sensation a few years ago over reports of mysterious coins with radio frequency transmitters, until they were debunked. The culprit turned out to be a commemorative quarter in Canada.

But at the height of the mystery, senior Pentagon officials speculated whether Canadians were involved in the spy caper.

"I don't think it is an issue of the Canadians being the bad guys," the Pentagon's counterintelligence chief wrote in an exchange of e-mails obtained this week by The Associated Press, "but then again, who knows."

In the e-mails, released to the AP under the U.S. Freedom of Information Act with names blacked out but job titles disclosed, Pentagon officials question whether they should warn military officers in the U.S. Northern Command, who regularly met Canadian counterparts about classified subjects inside bug-proof, government meeting rooms. The rooms are known as secure compartmentalized information facilities, or SKIFs.

"Isn't the Canadian piece something that should be briefed to Northcom since the Canadians sit in their SKIFs?" asked the Pentagon's deputy director for counterintelligence oversight, in e-mails marked "Secret/NoForn."

"Good point," replied the Pentagon's acting director for counterintelligence. "It is possible that DSS (the U.S. Defense Security Service) sent their report to Northcom. Then again, I don't think it is an issue of the Canadians being the bad guys, but then again, who knows."

Who knows?

Canada is among the closest of U.S. allies, its continental northern neighbor and the leading oil supplier for the U.S. The intelligence services of the two countries are extraordinarily tight and routinely share sensitive secrets. President Barack Obama chose Canada as the destination of his first foreign trip, to underscore what he described as the two countries' long-standing and growing friendship.

In sensational warnings that circulated publicly in late 2006 and early 2007, the Pentagon's Defense Security Service said coins with radio transmitters were found planted on U.S. Army contractors with classified security clearances on at least three occasions between October 2005 and January 2006 as the contractors traveled through Canada.

In January 2007, the government abruptly reversed itself and said the warnings weren't true. But the case remained a mystery until months later, when AP learned that the flap had been caused by suspicions over the odd-looking Canadian "poppy" quarter with a bright red flower. The silver-colored 25-cent piece features the red image of a poppy - Canada's flower of war remembrance - inlaid on a maple leaf.

What suspicious contractors believed to be "nanotechnology" on the coins 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.

The Pentagon turned over the latest e-mails from inside its Office of the Undersecretary for Defense for Intelligence nearly two years after the AP requested them under the Freedom of Information Act. Many of the e-mails were censored over what the Pentagon said was national security and personal privacy.

One e-mail included a curious message on the same day the Defense Security Service publicly disavowed its warning about the spy coins. "I am guessing y'all know the status of the Canadian coin situation," it read. It called for an internal meeting "to chat about the next step to put Humpty together again" and suggested notifying the media - and the Canadians.

* * * * *

SIR, STEP AWAY FROM THE HORSE.

Get the rubber gloves we need to do a body cavity search on both of them.

Horses, why is it always horses? I hate horses.

from American Thinker

December 04, 2009

Is the AP trying to sow discord between the US and Canada?

Denis Keohane

There can be no other explanation for the timing of this non-story than that folks at AP are trying to sow discord between us and a critical ally in Afghanistan at a point when our President is asking for such allies to commit with us to an Afghan ‘surge’. The headline implies Pentagon distrust of Canada and the first line of the article asks how much does our government trust Canada!

Only after reading two thirds of the article do we discover this is about a story that was news in late 2006 and early 2007 based on suspicions that some Canadian coins planted on U.S. Defense contactors contained transmitters! The article also points that by January of 2007 our government denied the story’s validity. Oddly enough (or not really) this AP story from that two years ago about the supposedly bugged coins stated that the actual Pentagon report on them did not suggest that the Canadians might be behind the bugging! Further, the experts cited by the AP suggested the culprits could be the Russians or Chinese! The AP’s charge about the Pentagon and our government not trusting the Canadians is all based upon one e-mail in which a Pentagon official says that he doesn’t think the Canadians are the bad guys in the bugged coins business, but then says “who knows”! That’s it! That’s the new story! That’s our government’s thinking about an ally! Who knows!

It s not coincidental that the Associated Press assigned eleven reporters to fact check Sarah Palin’s book but has not yet noticed anything newsworthy about the Climategate e-mails! It is not accidental that they publish a story meant to stoke Canadian bad feelings toward the U.S. at exactly the time that our ally begins to discuss its own response to the Afghanistan surge.

Could it be the thought police at the government controlled media? "Relax citizens, we will tell you what to think."