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. which ultimately did not take place.
This is revealed by FBI documents, now declassified, according to which the IRA sympathizer thus sought to avenge the death of his daughter. The police officer 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 He claimed that his daughter had been killed in Northern Ireland by a rubber bullet”.
“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 National Park.” the documents point out.
This information is among 102 pages of FBI records on Elizabeth II that have been released publicly. Although 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 visited the US: the IRA and the supporters of her.
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 the then Prince Charles, was killed in an IRA bombing in Ireland. 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)”.