Prior to Queen Elizabeth II’s visit to San Francisco in 1983, a city police officer who regularly frequented an Irish pub warned federal agents of a possible threat against Her Majesty by an Irish Republican Army sympathizer who he was seeking revenge for the death of his newborn daughter, released FBI records show.
The unidentified police officer claimed that on February 4, 1983, about a month before Ronald and Nancy Reagan were to host a visit from the Queen and Prince Philip, he received a phone call from a man he knew from the pub “who claimed that his daughter had been killed in Northern Ireland by a rubber bullet,” according to a confidential FBI teletype.
“This man also claimed that he would try to harm Queen Elizabeth by throwing something from the Golden Gate Bridge onto the royal yacht Britannia as it sails below, or would attempt to kill Queen Elizabeth when visiting Yosemite. National Park,” the memo says.
The teletype is between 102 pages of FBI records about Queen Elizabeth II that were released publicly Monday night in response to a Freedom of Information Act request filed by NBC News with the agency following the queen’s death on September 8.
The records, posted on «The Vault,» the FBI’s public website where high-interest documents are often posted, mostly reflect standard behind-the-scenes communications about a visiting head of state, including memos shared by federal agents, itineraries , press clippings, and other documents largely relate to the Queen’s various visits to the United States, dating back to 1976.
Although the records, some of which are heavily redacted, do not indicate that the threat from San Francisco developed beyond the words of an angry pub patron, they do clearly reflect a persistent source of potential danger to the Queen whenever she visited the USA: the IRA and its sympathizers.
Formed in the late 1960s as a secret armed wing of the Sinn Fein political movement, the modern version of the Irish Republican Army was dedicated to driving British forces out of Northern Ireland and unifying Ireland, often by violent means.
The documents show intelligence and preparations routinely shared by FBI agents with the US Secret Service, local police agencies and other law enforcement about the IRA and its sympathizers in the lead up to and during visits by queen status.
During her trip to New York for the American Bicentennial celebrations in Battery Park in 1976, an NYPD intelligence detective reported to the FBI that there were no arrests, but noted that a citation was issued to a pilot of a small plane about to fly over the park with a sign reading: «England, get out of Ireland».
The FBI’s concerns about possible IRA violence against members of the royal family were not unfounded. In 1979, Elizabeth’s second cousin, Lord Dickie Mountbatten, a close confidante of the then Prince Charles, was killed in an Irish Republican Army bombing raid in Ireland.
In 1989, prior to the Queen’s visit to the East Coast and parts of the southern United States, an internal FBI memo noted that, despite knowing no specific dangers, «the possibility of threats to the British monarchy is ever present.» by the Irish Republicans. Army (IRA)”.
“Boston and New York are requested to remain alert to any threats against Queen Elizabeth II by members of the IRA and immediately provide the same to Louisville,” the memo added.
Two years later, during a 1991 visit when the Queen and President George Bush planned to attend a Baltimore Orioles baseball game by helicopter, FBI agents shared intelligence with the Secret Service that «Irish groups «They were planning protests at Memorial Stadium.
A ticker on the 1991 ballpark visit cited an article in the «Philadelphia Irish Newspaper» which said that «anti-British sentiments are rising as a result of the well-publicized injustices inflicted on the Birmingham Six by the corrupt judicial system.» English and the recent eruption of brutal murders of unarmed Irish nationalists in the six counties by Republican death squads.
The “Birmingham Six” were six Irishmen wrongfully convicted and imprisoned for the IRA bombing of two pubs in Birmingham, England, in 1974. Their convictions were overturned in 1994, a few months before the Queen’s visit.
While the FBI memo indicated that the article «contained no threats against the Queen’s Chair», it said its content «could be viewed as inflammatory» and that «a large number of grandstand tickets had been reserved by an Irish group» for the game. .
The FBI often collected details from published news articles to help identify groups planning to protest the Queen’s visits, and also kept in touch with local police agencies and their «assets» within the protest groups, as the records show.
By the 1983 visit to San Francisco, police had warned the FBI that due to the wide variety of protesters against Reagan and the Queen during their 1983 visit, «it will be very difficult to anticipate and prevent incidents that may embarrass the Queen.» . or the president.
But the records do not indicate that the FBI or other law enforcement agencies arrested anyone for attempting to carry out politically motivated acts of violence or plotting against the queen during that or any other visit.
As for the potential threat to dump an item on the queen’s yacht in 1983 made by the patron of the Dovre Club, an Irish pub in San Francisco’s Mission District, the FBI memo describing the threat noted that the The Secret Service planned to «close the walkways on the Golden Gate Bridge as the yacht approaches.»
A letter from the FBI on Tuesday notifying NBC News of the release of the records on the queen noted that «additional records may exist that potentially address your topic» in addition to those released by the agency this week.