FBI feared IRA hit on Queen's US visit

Plot 'to drop object from bridge onto royal yacht'

- CHRISTOPHER BUCKTIN

AN IRA sympathiser plotted to "drop some object" from San Francisco's Golden Gate Bridge on to the royal yacht to murder Queen Elizabeth, secret FBI files show.

The man, who claimed his daughter had been killed in Northern Ireland by a rubber bullet, also devised a second plan to murder the monarch when she visited Yosemite National Park in California.

The FBI was told of the plots in February 1983 weeks before the royal visit - by a San Francisco police officer who was a regular at an Irish Republican pub where the would-be assassin drank.

Newly declassified documents made available after the Queen's death show the bureau was concerned about "everpresent" IRA threats during her US visits.

The unidentified officer claimed he had a phone call from a man he knew from the Dovre Club.