FBI file reveals IRA plot to kill Queen during US visit

The FBI has revealed the existence of a possible IRA plot to assassinate Queen Elizabeth II during a visit to the United States in 1983.

Recently released FBI records show agents warned of an “ever-present” threat to the late emperor during 11 America tour During his reign of seven decades.

files that appear in fbi vault containing information of high public interest, show them received intelligence that Queen Elizabeth may have been targeted by an Irish Republican Army sympathizer seeking revenge for the death of his daughter in Northern Ireland on her 1983 visit.

According to the files, a San Francisco police officer notified federal agents that he had received a call from a man he knew socially from drinking at an Irish bar in the city. On February 4, 1983, the Queen and Prince Philip about a month before the arrival of Hosted by Ronald Reagan at the White House.

Unidentified man claimed he was going to attempt to harm Queen Elizabeth by dropping an object from the Golden Gate Bridge on the royal yacht Britannia, or attempt to kill her when she visited Yosemite National Park, confidential FBI memo states.

The FBI’s 102 pages of records about Queen Elizabeth were released under the Freedom of Information Act following media requests following her death last September.

Records do not reveal whether the assassination plot developed beyond the angry words of a pubgoer.

But they show how seriously federal agents took potential threats against the royals during official visits before the signing of the Good Friday Agreement, which largely ended the sectarian violence known as the Troubles in 1998 .

During a visit to New York for America’s bicentennial celebration in 1976, an NYPD intelligence officer reported issuing a summons to a pilot who flew over a city park with a “Get out of England, Ireland” sign board Was full

And before a 1989 trip to Boston, New York and the southern United States, an FBI memo warned that “the possibility of threats against the British monarchy from the Irish Republican Army (IRA) is always present.”

The memo stated, “Boston and New York are requested to be on the alert for any threats against Queen Elizabeth II from IRA members and to render Louisville forthwith.”

Two years later, the bureau disclosed concerns that Irish terrorist groups were planning to protest Elizabeth’s appearance at a Baltimore Orioles baseball game and White House event during a 1991 state visit.

Citing a story in a Philadelphia-based newspaper, it is said Irish versionThe FBI said: “The article states that anti-British sentiment is running high as a result of the publicized injustices perpetrated on the Birmingham Six by the corrupt English judicial system and the recent brutal killings of unarmed Irish nationalists in six counties. Loyalist deaths Squad of

The Birmingham Six were six Irish men who were wrongfully convicted and imprisoned for carrying out two deadly pub bombings in the English city in the mid-1970s.

The group was released from prison months before the Queen’s visit to the US in 1991, after an appeal found evidence that the police had fabricated evidence and tortured the men during interrogation.

The FBI noted that although the article did not contain threats against the Queen or then-President George HW Bush, the statements could be viewed as inflammatory.

“The article stated that an Irish group had reserved a large block of grand stand tickets.”