Documents released by the FBI following the death of Queen Elizabeth II showed the agency had concerns that the monarch faced a threat of assassination from the Irish Republican Army when she visited the US in 1983.
According to the newly released documents, a threat that was processed out of the agency’s San Francisco office had been made against Elizabeth. The threat was made to a San Francisco police officer.
Information in the file about the incident said the officer had received a call from a man he knew that visited the same Irish pub as the officer.
According to the BBC, 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.”
“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 says.
The agency took seriously the threats, which came after the queen’s second cousin, Lord Mountbatten, and members of his family were killed in an IRA bombing off the coast of County Sligo, Republic of Ireland, in 1979.
The documents showed the FBI remained vigilant against any possible IRA threat against the queen when she visited the United States.
