Assassination threat was made on Queen Elizabeth II during her visit to the US in 1983, according to newly released FBI documents. Investigations conducted by the Federal Bureau of Investigation about records relating to the late queen’s trip to the United States has been release following her death last year.
They show that the FBI, which helped keep the monarch safe during her visits, grew increasingly concerned about threats from the IRA. An assassination threat was made to a San Francisco police officer, According to the records, an officer who frequented an Irish pub in San Francisco alerted federal agents to a call from a man he met at the scene. I’m seeking revenge for my daughter the man told the officer, who “was killed in Northern Ireland with a rubber bullet”.
The threat was made on February 4, 1983 – about a month before Queen Elizabeth II and her husband Prince Philip visited California. “He will attempt to harm Queen Elizabeth and will do so by dropping an object from the Golden Gate Bridge onto the Royal Yacht Britannia as it sails below or by attempting to kill Queen Elizabeth during her visit. her to Yosemite National Park,” the document says.
In response to the threat, the Secret Service planned to “close the passageways of the Golden Gate Bridge as the yacht approaches.” It is unclear what action was taken in Yosemite, but the visit continued. No details of the arrests have been released by the FBI.
The 102-page cache was uploaded to Vault, the FBI’s information website, on Monday following a Freedom of Information Act request submitted by US media.
Queen Elizabeth II and Prince Philip speak to National Park rangers during their visit to Yosemite
Many of the late Queen’s state visits to the United States, including a visit to the West Coast in 1983, came amid rising tensions over unrest in Northern Ireland.
In 1976, the late Queen was in New York to celebrate America’s 200th anniversary.
Criminal charges were issued to a pilot for flying a small plane over Battery Park with a ‘England out of Ireland’ sign, documents reveal.
The records show how vigilant the FBI remains over what it sees as the true potential of threats 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.
When an American broke protocol and delighted the Queen
Prior to the late Queen’s personal visit to Kentucky in 1989, an internal FBI memo stated that “the possibility that threats to the British Monarchy persisted from the Irish Republican Army ( IRA).”
