FBI reveals 1980s plot to kill Queen Elizabeth II. According to newly released FBI documents, Queen Elizabeth II faced a potential assassination threat during a visit to the United States in 1983.
Following her death last year, the Federal Bureau of Investigation released a cache of files relating to the late Queen’s travels to the United States.
They demonstrate how the FBI, which assisted in ensuring the monarch’s safety during her visits, was concerned about IRA threats.
A police officer in San Francisco was threatened with assassination.
According to the report, an officer who frequented an Irish pub in San Francisco alerted federal agents to a phone call from a man he met there.
According to the officer, the man told him he was seeking vengeance for his daughter, who was “killed in Northern Ireland by a rubber bullet.”
The threat was issued on February 4, 1983, about a month before Queen Elizabeth II and her husband, Prince Philip, were scheduled to visit California.
“He was going to attempt to harm Queen Elizabeth and would do this either by dropping some object off the Golden Gate Bridge onto the Royal Yacht Britannia when it sails underneath or would attempt to kill Queen Elizabeth when she visited Yosemite National Park,” the document says.
In response to the threat, the Secret Service had planned to “close the walkways on the Golden Gate Bridge as the yacht nears”. It is unclear what measures were taken at Yosemite, but the visit went ahead. No details of arrests were published by the FBI.
Following a Freedom of Information Act request from US media outlets, the 102-page cache was uploaded to the Vault, the FBI’s information website, on Monday.
Many of the late Queen’s state visits to the United States, including the West Coast visit in 1983, occurred during heightened tensions in Northern Ireland as a result of the Troubles.
As the FBI reveals 1980s plot to kill Queen Elizabeth II, the late Queen visited New York City for America’s Bicentennial celebrations in 1976.
The documents show how a pilot was summoned for flying a small plane over Battery Park with a sign reading “England, Get out of Ireland.”
The documents show how the FBI remained vigilant to what it perceived to be the real threat to the late Queen.
Lord Mountbatten, her second cousin, was killed in an IRA bombing off the coast of County Sligo, Republic of Ireland, in 1979.
An internal FBI memo read, “the possibility of threats against the British Monarchy is ever-present from the Irish Republican Army (IRA)” ahead of the late Queen’s personal visit to Kentucky in 1989.
It went on to say that “Boston and New York are requested to remain alert for any threats against Queen Elizabeth II on the part of IRA members and immediately furnish same to Louisville,” in Kentucky.
The late Queen, who owned racehorses, is said to have visited Kentucky several times during her lifetime to take in the state’s equestrian highlights, including the Kentucky Derby.
The late Queen was scheduled to attend a Baltimore Orioles baseball game with President George H Bush during a state visit in 1991.
The FBI alerted the Secret Service that “Irish groups” were planning stadium protests and that “an Irish group had reserved a large block of grandstand tickets” for the game.
The bureau told NBC News that “additional records” may exist in addition to those released this week, but no timetable for their release was provided.
Also read: Eurovision: Kate plays piano to pay tribute to late Queen Elizabeth II
