According to declassified paperwork, the FBI gave credence to the specter of a person, sympathetic to the IRA, throughout his go to to San FranciscoThe suspect deliberate to assault the queen by throwing an object from the Golden Gate, on the Britannia go, or when visiting the National Park Yosemite Queen Elizabeth II of England dies after 70 years of reign
The Federal Bureau of Investigation, the FBI, has declassified a sequence of paperwork associated to Elizabeth II’s journeys to the United States, after her loss of life in September 2022, which reveal a attainable plot to assassinate the queen within the eighties. The FBI, in control of the monarch’s safety throughout her visits, gave credibility to the specter of a person, a sympathizer of the IRA, in accordance with the BBC.
A police officer in San Francisco warned federal brokers that the suspect, who frequented an Irish pub within the Californian metropolis, had reported that he needed revenge for the loss of life of his daughter who “had been killed in Northern Ireland by a bullet rubber”. The risk, in accordance with the file, got here on February 4, 1983, a few month earlier than the Queen and her husband, Prince Philip, visited California.
“He was going to attempt to assault Queen Elizabeth by throwing an object from the Golden Gate Bridge, on the passage of the Britannia, the yacht of the British royal household, or when visiting Yosemite National Park,” the doc states. In response to the risk, the FBI deliberate to “shut the walkways of the Golden Gate Bridge because the yacht approached.” It is unclear what steps have been taken at Yosemite, however the go to did happen.
The Queen, the Duke of Edinburgh and the Reagans aboard the Britannia in 1983. David Levenson / Getty
The 102-page file was uploaded to Vault, the FBI info web site, following a Freedom of Information Act request filed by the US media. In the paperwork, the FBI doesn’t give particulars of arrests.
The recordsdata present how the federal company seen actual threats. Four years earlier, in 1979, the IRA killed Lord Mountbatten, Elizabeth II’s second cousin, after planting a bomb on his ship off the coast of Ireland.
In 1989, an inner FBI memo once more warned that “the potential for threats in opposition to the British monarchy is ever current from the IRA” after one other journey the queen made to Kentucky to attend a horse race.
On a 1991 state go to, Elizabeth II was scheduled to look at a Baltimore Orioles baseball sport with President George Bush Sr. and warned that “Irish teams” have been planning protests on the stadium and that “an Irish group had reserved loads of tickets within the grandstand”. The company might make extra paperwork public.
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