Queen Elizabeth II: FBI documents reveal threat to late monarch

WASHINGTON-

The FBI revealed a potential threat to Queen Elizabeth II during her trip to the United States in 1983.

The documents were released this week on the FBI Archives website. Queen Elizabeth II died last September after a 70-year reign.

The Queen’s visit to the West Coast with her husband, Prince Philip, included a stopover in San Francisco in March 1983. The FBI said a San Francisco police officer who frequented a bar popular with supporters of the he Irish Republican Army received a phone call in February. 1983 of a man who claimed his daughter was killed in Northern Ireland by a rubber bullet.

According to the documents, the man said he would ‘attempt to harm Queen Elizabeth’ by dropping an object from the Golden Gate Bridge onto the Queen’s royal yacht or trying to kill her during a visit to the Yosemite National Park. The documents indicated that the Secret Service intended to close the bridge walkways as the yacht approached.

The names of the officer and the caller were redacted from the documents, which did not indicate whether precautions were taken at Yosemite or whether any arrests were made. A note dated March 7, 1983 said the Queen had ended the American visit “without incident” and that “no further inquiry is warranted”.

The documents detailed other security concerns regarding the Queen’s visits to various US cities. When she attended a Baltimore Orioles game with President George HW Bush in May 1991, several dozen demonstrators in the park chanted slogans condemning British policy in Northern Ireland.