The FBI reveals documents from 1983 when it thwarted a plot and prevented an attack on Queen Elizabeth II

The US Federal Bureau of Investigation. (FBI, for its acronym in English) declassified documents related to the Queen’s visits Isabel II to American soil, revealing a possible assassination plot by Irish nationalist sympathizers.

The documents show how the authorities repeatedly prepared for threats from supporters of the Provisional Irish Republican Army (IRA)_, were revealed as a result of freedom of information requests filed after the monarch’s death last September.

The possible assassination threat was revealed the night before Elizabeth II’s arrival in San Francisco, California in 1983, when a police officer alerted federal agents to a possible attack.

The declassified FBI documents warned that it would be “very difficult” to avoid events that would embarrass the Queen during the journey; so also, there were warnings of an attack by IRA sympathizers during a 1981 visit.

The FBI assessed the IRA threat to the British royal family as “ever-present,” the report describes. Daily mail.

The police officer who tipped off authorities that he regularly drank in an Irish pub and told officers about an IRA sympathizer determined to avenge his daughter’s death. The subject claimed ‘that his daughter had been killed by a rubber bullet in Northern Ireland’.

This warning call came about a month before the then president Ronald Reagan and the first lady Nancy Reagan receive the queen and the prince philip57, in California.

Official documents show that the man told the officer that he intended to “try to harm” the late queen by throwing “an object” off the Golden Gate Bridge as the royal yacht Britannia sailed underneath. Another opportunity to attack the monarch is while visiting Yosemite National Park.

The documents add that the man in question had previously been involved in police investigations. He was described as “generally co-operative, although he does not hide his sympathy for the IRA”. [sic].

It wasn’t the first time the FBI had warned of possible attacks on the monarch. Two years earlier, the FBI warned of a “possible attack” on Elizabeth II when it visited American cities with strong ties to Ireland, including Boston and New York.

Another 1989 document said:The possibility of threats against the British monarchy is ever present from the Irish Republican Army”. He continued: “Boston and New York are requested to remain alert to any threats against Queen Elizabeth II by members of the IRA and Louisville immediately doing the same.”

And in 1976, police called a pilot in New York to stop him from flying a banner that read “England, Get Out of Ireland” while Elizabeth II was in town.

The World War III announcement that Queen Elizabeth II had ready to deliver in 1983

In a historic act, Elizabeth II shakes hands with a former IRA member

The frequent concerns of US authorities and the royal family themselves were far from unfounded: in 1979, Elizabeth II’s second cousin, Lord Mountbatten, was killed in an IRA bomb attack. He and three other people died after their fishing boat was filled with explosives that later detonated.

There were also previous assassination attempts on the Queen, making the IRA threat even more powerful. In 1981, a New Zealand teenager pointed a gun at the monarch as she got out of a car.

Christopher John Lewis fired a rifle, which misfired, during the Queen’s tour of the country. But he soon became obsessed with the idea of ​​taking down the royal family.

Two years later, he attempted to overpower guards at a psychiatric hospital where he was being held to kill Prince Charles, who was in New Zealand with Princess Diana and Prince William.