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A recently released cache of files by the FBI has revealed a plot to assassinate Queen Elizabeth II during her visit to the US in 1983.

The IRA has been fingered in the plot that was ‘monitored’ during her visit to the country. The threats were first reported by a police officer in San Francisco who was alerted to the plan after being contacted by a man that frequented the same Irish pub that he did.

The police officer said the man told him he was ‘seeking revenge for his daughter who had been killed in Northern Ireland by a rubber bullet.’  This happened in February 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.”

Although the report had no details about an arrest, the FBI went ahead and closed off walkways over Golden Gate Bridge. The FBI did also not note anything about possible security measures during her visit to Yosemite National Park, but the visit went ahead without incident, so we can safely assume the Feds were on it.

The report is one of the latest caches of documents released to the FBI’s information website, called The Vault. This collection of information on old cases was made possible after a Freedom of Information Act request was submitted by US media outlets.

The Queen’s visit during the 80s took place during a time when there were heightened tensions in Ireland, as some of our older readers will clearly remember as being an intense time in the UK.

The documents also 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.”

More threats were made during her 1991 visit to President George H Bush, and several threats were reported by ‘an Irish group had reserved a large block of grandstand tickets’ to the basketball game she was scheduled to attend with the smaller Bush.

Obviously, all these threats came to nought, and the Queen died peacefully in 2022.

[source:bbc]