FBI releases information on 1980s plot to kill Queen

FBI documents that have recently been released show that the Queen faced an assassination threat on a 1983 visit to America.

According to the documents, a threat was made to a police officer in San Francisco. The officer who frequented an Irish pub in San Francisco told federal agents about a call from a man he had met at the pub. The man was said to have been seeking revenge after his daughter had been killed by a rubber bullet in Northern Ireland.

The document says that the man "was going to attempt to harm Queen Elizabeth and would do this either by dropping some object off the Golden Gate Bridge onto the Royal Yacht Britannia when it sails underneath, or would attempt to kill Queen Elizabeth when she visited Yosemite National Park."

The Secret Service had planned to close the walkways on the Golden Gate Bridge in response to the threat. There were no details of any arrests.

Image: New Zealand Government, Office of the Governor-General, CC BY 4.0 , via Wikimedia Commons