27-5-2023 Recently released FBI files have revealed a potential plot to assassinate Queen Elizabeth II during her visit to California in 1983. The possible threat followed a phone call made by a man claiming that his daughter had been killed in Northern Ireland by a rubber bullet. The document also refers to a bar frequented by Irish Republican Army (IRA) sympathisers.
The Queen and her husband Prince Philip visited the west coast of the United States in February and March 1983, and the trip passed off without incident. However, the file states that the man claimed he was going to attempt to harm the Queen “by dropping some object off the Golden Gate Bridge onto the royal yacht Britannia when it sails underneath”. Alternatively, he “would attempt to kill Queen Elizabeth when she visited Yosemite National Park”, the document added.
A separate file among the documents, dated 1989, pointed out that while the FBI was unaware of any specific threats against the Queen, “the possibility of threats against the British monarchy is ever present from the Irish Republican Army”. In 1979, IRA paramilitaries opposed to British rule in Northern Ireland had killed Louis Mountbatten, the last colonial governor of India and an uncle of Prince Philip, in a bomb attack.
The Queen, who passed away last September at the age of 96, had previously been the target of other assassination plots. In 1970, suspected IRA sympathisers unsuccessfully attempted to derail her train west of Sydney, while in 1981, the IRA tried to bomb her during a visit to Shetland, off the northeast coast of Scotland. In the same year, a mentally disturbed teenager fired a single shot towards the Queen’s car during a visit to New Zealand.
In 1981, another teenager fired six blanks at her during the Trooping the Colour birthday parade in central London. The following year, Michael Fagan managed to get into the Queen’s bedroom and spent 10 minutes talking to her before she was able to raise the alarm. Fagan had climbed up a drainpipe and wandered into her bedroom before a palace staffer lured him away with the promise of a shot of whisky.
