Shortly before a visit by Elizabeth II to San Francisco in 1983, a city police officer who frequented an Irish bar warned the FBI about a possible threat against the queen by an Irish Republican Army (IRA) sympathizer, who ultimately it was not carried out.
This is revealed by various FBI documents now declassified and to which NBC News has had access, which ensures that the IRA sympathizer sought with the attack on the monarch, who died last year, to avenge the death of his daughter.
The policeman who reported the threat stated that on February 4, 1983, a month before Ronald and Nancy Reagan received Elizabeth II and her husband, he received a phone call from a man he knew from the aforementioned bar “who stated that her daughter had been killed in Northern Ireland by a rubber bullet,” the chain noted.
“This man also said that he would try to harm Queen Elizabeth by throwing something from the Golden Gate Bridge at the royal yacht Britannia as it passed under it, or he would try to kill Queen Elizabeth when she visited Yosemite. “the documents state.
This information is among 102 pages of FBI records on Elizabeth II that have been released publicly in response to a request made by NBC News and other outlets to the federal agency following the queen’s death on September 8.
The records were posted on The Vault, the FBI’s publicly accessible website, and include documents relating to the Queen’s various visits to the United States, dating back to 1976.
While the documents indicate that the threat against Elizabeth II in San Francisco was no more than a warning from an angry person, they “clearly reflect a persistent source of potential danger to the Queen whenever she visits the US: the IRA and its sympathizers.” “, specifies the American chain.
Formed in the early 20th century but became an armed wing of the nationalist political movement Sinn Féin in the 1960s, the IRA sought to drive British forces out of Northern Ireland and unify Ireland, often by violent means.
The documents show that FBI agents routinely shared intelligence and preparations with the US Secret Service, local police agencies, and other law enforcement about the IRA and its sympathizers prior to and during state visits by the IRA. queen.
The FBI’s concerns about possible IRA violence against members of the royal family were not unfounded. In 1979, Elizabeth’s second cousin, Lord “Dickie” Mountbatten, close to then-Prince Charles, was killed in an IRA bombing in Ireland, NBC recalls.
In 1989, prior to the Queen’s visit to the East Coast and parts of the southern United States, an internal FBI memo noted that, despite knowing no specific dangers, “the possibility of threats to the British Monarchy is ever present.” by the Irish Republican Army (IRA)”.
