Pentagon e-mails suggest US distrust of Canada

WASHINGTON: 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 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-freegovernment meeting rooms.

The rooms are known as secure compartmentalized information facilities, or SKIFs.