FBI revealed a plot from the 1980s to assassinate Queen Elizabeth II
Queen Elizabeth II faced a possible assassination threat during a 1983 trip to the US, recently released FBI records show.
The Federal Bureau of Investigation has revealed a stash of files linking to the late Queen’s trips to the US following her demise last year.
The Queen Elizabeth II could have been killed on her US trip, says FBI:
They reveal how the FBI, which helped ensure the Majesty’s safety during her trips, was anxious about IRA threats.
The assassination danger was made to a police official in San Francisco. According to the documents, an officer who frequented an Irish pub in San Francisco alerted federal representatives regarding a call from a man he had met at the venue.
The official said the man told him he was aiming vengeance for his daughter, who “had been murdered in Northern Ireland by a rubber bullet”. The menace came on 4 February 1983 – almost a month before Queen Elizabeth II and her husband Prince Philip’s trip to California.
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“He was going to try to hurt Queen Elizabeth and would do this either by dropping something off the Golden Gate Bridge onto the Royal Yacht Britannia when it floats underneath or would try to kill Queen Elizabeth when she came to Yosemite National Park,” the file reveals.
In reply to the threat, the Secret Service had intended to “shut the walkways on the Golden Gate Bridge as the yacht approaches”. It is undefined what actions were taken at Yosemite, but the trip went ahead. The FBI revealed no details of arrests.
The 102-page stockpile was uploaded to the Vault, the FBI’s news website, following a Freedom of Information Act proposal submitted by US press outlets.
Many of the late Queen’s state trips to the US, including the 1983 tour to the West Coast, came during heightened uncertainties amid the Troubles in Northern Ireland.
