Queen Elizabeth II: FBI releases files on attack plans

The FBI has released 40-year-old files that point to plots against Britain’s Queen Elizabeth II during a 1983 visit to California. The threat became known through a call from a man “claiming that his daughter had been killed by a rubber bullet in Northern Ireland,” according to the documents that have now been released. He threatened to harm the Queen.

According to the FBI files, the suspect in San Francisco “intended to throw an object from the Golden Gate Bridge at the royal yacht ‘Britannia’ as it sails under it.” Alternatively, the man wanted to “try to kill Elizabeth II when she visits Yosemite National Park.” The visit of the Queen and her husband Prince Philip in February and March 1983 in the US state of California passed without incident.

Queen Elizabeth II targeted by assassins

The threats against Elizabeth II are set against the background of the Northern Ireland conflict. In 1979, the Irish underground organization IRA, fighting for independence from London, killed Louis Mountbatten, the last Viceroy of India, in a bomb attack. He was an uncle of Prince Philip.

The Queen, who died in September at the age of 96, has also reportedly been singled out as a target. In 1970, suspected IRA sympathizers tried to derail a train carrying the monarch west of the Australian metropolis of Sydney. In 1981, the IRA planned to bomb Elizabeth II while she was visiting the Shetland Islands off the coast of Scotland.

Also in 1981 in New Zealand, the mentally ill youth Christopher Lewis fired a single shot in the direction of the Queen. The attempted attack in the city of Dunedin was covered up by the police at the time and only came to light when the New Zealand secret service SIS published the relevant documents at the request of the media.