FBI Files Reveal Plot to Kill Queen Elizabeth II
- BBC.co.uk
VIVA – The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) has released files relating to the late Queen Elizabeth II’s travels to the United States, following her death last year.
The files show how the FBI, which helped secure the monarch's safety during her visits, worried about IRA threats. The assassination threat was made to a police officer in San Francisco.
According to the file, an officer who frequented an Irish pub in San Francisco warned federal agents about a call from a man he had met at the venue. The officer said the man told him he was seeking revenge for his daughter who "had been killed in Northern Ireland by a rubber bullet."
The threat came on February 4, 1983 about a month ahead of Queen Elizabeth II and her husband Prince Philip's visit to California.
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- BBC.co.uk
"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 said as reported from BBC site.
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.
The 102-page cache was uploaded to the Vault, the FBI's information website, on Monday, following a Freedom of Information Act request submitted by the United States media outlets.
Many of the late Queen's state visits to the US, including the 1983 visit to the West Coast, came during heightened tensions amid the Troubles in Northern Ireland.
In 1976, the late Queen was in New York City for America's Bicentennial celebrations. The documents reveal how a summons was issued to a pilot for flying a small plane over Battery Park with a sign that read "England, Get out of Ireland,"
Moreover, the files show how the FBI remained vigilant to what it considered to be the real potential of threats to the late Queen.
Her second cousin Lord Mountbatten was killed in an IRA bombing off the coast of Country Sligo, Republic of Ireland, in 1979.
Meanwhile, on a state visit in 1991, the late Queen was scheduled to see a Baltimore Orioles baseball game with President George H Bush.
The FBI warned the Secret Service that "Irish groups" were planning protests at the stadium and "an Irish group had reserved a large block of grandstand tickets" to the game.
The bureau stated there might be "additional records" that exist besides the ones released this week, but it did not set out a timetable for their publication.
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