FBI files expose conspiracy to assassinate Queen Elizabeth during US visit

According to the document found in the FBI vault, a man claimed he planned to harm the monarch during her visit to California.

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Queen Elizabeth, with her husband, the Duke of Edinburgh, and their son, Prince Edward, in 1976

One FBI file, found in the agency's online vault, revealed information about a past visit by Queen Elizabeth II to the United States, suggesting the existence of a conspiracy to assassinate the deceased monarch. The document describes possible intelligence shared with federal agents, which warned of a threat to the queen's life that occurred four decades ago in California.

The file

In February and March 1983, Queen Elizabeth and her husband, the duke of Edinburgh, undertook an official visit to the west coast of the United States. During that time, according to records, a phone call from an individual who claimed that his daughter had been fatally wounded in Northern Ireland by a rubber bullet. This same person also stated that he intended to harm Queen Elizabeth by planning to hurl an object from the ponte Golden Gate towards the royal yacht Britannia as it passed underneath, or even trying to assassinate Queen Elizabeth during her visit to Yosemite National Park.

Other document

Among the more than 100 pages of a document additional published online by the FBI, this time relating to the Queen's 1991 state visit to the United States, concerns were raised about possible protests by Irish groups during the Queen's presence at a baseball game, as well as at an event ceremony at the White House. This information was obtained from an Irish newspaper in Philadelphia called the Irish Edition. The file mentioned the following:

“The article asserted that anti-British sentiments are rising as a result of well-publicized injustices inflicted on the Birmingham Six by the corrupt English judicial system and the recent spate of brutal murders of unarmed Irish nationalists in the six counties by loyalist death squads... Although the article does not contain threats against the president or queen, the statements can be seen as inflammatory. The article claimed that an Irish group had booked a large block of grandstand tickets... A separate file among the documents, dated 1989, said that while the FBI was unaware of any specific threats against the Queen, “the possibility of threats against the British monarchy is always present on the part of the Irish Republican Army”.

In 1979, Lord Mountbatten, the Queen's second cousin, was the victim of an IRA bombing in County Sligo, Ireland, resulting in his death.