What was the plan like, according to the FBI?
According to information obtained by the San Francisco police from a source close to Irish nationalist circles, a man who claimed that “his daughter was killed in Northern Ireland by a rubber bullet” had made plans “to attack Queen Elizabeth ”.
He planned to do so by “throwing an object from the Golden Gate Bridge onto the royal yacht ‘Britannia’ as it passed under it, or by attempting to kill the queen during her visit to Yosemite National Park,” he said.
Four years earlier, in 1979, the armed group IRA (Irish Republican Army) assassinated Louis Mountbatten, Elizabeth II’s distant cousin and her husband’s uncle, by planting a bomb on his boat. It was the height of the Northern Irish conflict that pitted Catholic republicans and Protestant unionists for 30 years, with the participation of the British army.
Another note, related to a state visit by the monarch in 1991, refers to threats by Irish groups to disrupt events that he had to attend, such as a baseball game and a reception at the White House.
A 1989 document states that, although there were no specific threats against the queen, “the possibility of threats against the British monarchy is always present from the IRA.”
Attacks against Queen Elizabeth II
Elizabeth II, who died last September in Scotland at the age of 96, was the target of other assassination attempts.
In 1970, suspected IRA sympathizers tried to derail his train west of Sydney, Australia, and in 1981 the IRA planned a bombing during a trip to northern Scotland.
That same year, a mentally challenged teenager fired a bullet into the Queen’s car during a visit to New Zealand. Also in 1981, another teenager fired six blanks at him during a military parade to celebrate the monarch’s birthday in central London.