Nothing like a good dose of Keystone Cops-like spyhunting to throw international relations into a tailspin.

The U.S. Department of Defense created an international buzz three years ago when they suspected some coins with sound-transmitting devices were planted on Army contractors and were being used to spy on them.

The coins turned out to be Canadian 25-cent pieces — 30 million of them were produced — that included a red poppy that our crack investigators thought was a listening device.

The best part, though, is that once it was determined that the coins were Canadian, Pentagon officials actually thought for a while that they couldn’t sure the Canadian government wasn’t trying to spy on us.

“I don’t think it is an issue of the Canadians being the bad guys,” a Pentagon counterintelligence chief wrote in papers that were just released, “but then again, who knows.”

For more on this story from the Edmonton Sun, click here.