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IRA plot to kill Queen in US in 1983 revealed

Threatening phone call revealed in US files leads back to an Irish bar, a radical landlord and a stuntloving journalist

By Nick Allen US Editor and Io Dodds in San Francisco

It was supposed to be the biggest showstopper of Elizabeth II’s visit to the US in 1983. But, little known to the Queen, the FBI was in a frenzy investigating a potential IRA plot to assassinate her as the Royal Yacht Britannia sailed under the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco. The origins of the threat can only now be revealed after the FBI declassified more than 100 pages of documents relating to the visit following Freedom of Information requests.

It was supposed to be the biggest showstopper of Elizabeth II’s visit to America in 1983.

But, little known to the Queen, the FBI was in a frenzy investigating a potential IRA plot to assassinate her as the Royal Yacht Britannia sailed under the Golden Gate Bridge.

The origins of the threat can only now be revealed after the FBI declassified more than 100 pages of documents relating to the visit following Freedom of Information requests.

An investigation by The Daily

Telegraph has found a trail of clues leading to an Irish bar in San Francisco’s Mission District, a colourful cast of characters including an IRA-sympathising pub landlord and a one-eyed radical journalist, and a bizarre attempt by Irish Republicans to have gulls dive-bomb Britannia.

The extraordinary tale even includes a cameo by the author,

Hunter S Thompson.

According to the classified FBI documents there was a febrile atmosphere at the time, not just in San Francisco but at other stops on the royal US tour.

In the run-up to the visit, agents had been planted in Irish Republican groups and files were being kept on their activities. It was only four years since Lord Mountbatten, the Queen’s second cousin, had been assassinated by the IRA.

The San Francisco threat was detailed in a memo addressed directly to the director of the FBI, William Webster, and marked “priority”. It said: “This entire communication is classified.”

The memo described the report of a US Secret Service agent on Feb 9, 1983, that an inspector at the San Francisco Police Department had passed on information gleaned by a police officer.

The names in the memo were redacted, but it referred to someone who was a “regular patron” and “well acquainted with [censored] of the Dovre Club”.

It said: “The Dovre Club has a popular reputation as a ‘Republican Bar’ that is frequented by sympathisers with the Provisional Irish Republican Army [PIRA].”

On the evening of Friday, Feb 4 1983, an unnamed individual had “received a telephone call from a man who claimed that his daughter had been killed in Northern Ireland by a rubber bullet. “This man additionally claimed that he was going to attempt to harm

Queen Elizabeth, and would do this either by dropping some object off the Golden Gate Bridge on to the Royal Yacht Britannia when it sails underneath, or would attempt to kill Queen Elizabeth when she visited Yosemite National Park.”

According to the FBI documents, the Secret Service agent planned to re-interview the police officer who received the tip-off the following day, but there was no record of that interview.

The memo said that the agent also intended to contact someone who had “been previously interviewed in PIRA cases and has been generally cooperative, although he makes no secret of his sympathies for the IRA”.

The Telegraph asked the FBI if, considering the amount of time that has passed, the names could be unredacted, but the agency “respectfully” declined.

An FBI spokesman said: “In general, the FBI does not comment on the content of the files released through FOI [Freedom of Information], and lets the information contained in the files speak for itself.”

The only concrete piece of information unredacted in the files is the Dovre Club, and it appears to have been well known to the FBI at the time.

The Dovre’s owner – Dublin-born

Pat Nolan – was something of a local legend in Irish Republican circles and presided over a raucous pub, at which barmen were regularly fired and where customers downed Harp, Dunphy’s, Tullamore Dew and Jameson whiskey until the early hours.

According to his obituary in the San

Francisco Chronicle in 1996, Nolan’s “dedication to the Irish cause was visible in 1981 when Bobby Sands, a hunger striker in a Northern Ireland prison, died during a protest fast.

“Enlisting the aid of Irish bar owners in San Francisco, Mr Nolan organised a three-hour shutdown of the saloons as a memorial to Sands.”

His was also a “vocal supporter of Irish Northern Aid [Noraid], a major faction in the movement to unite Ireland and Northern Ireland into a single Irish republic”, the obituary read.

Nolan once told the Chronicle: “Sands alerted the whole world to something. The kid died for something.”

Mike Mosher, a mural artist who occasionally worked behind the bar at the Dovre Club in the early 1980s, told

The Telegraph there was a sign above the bar saying: “Let us now drink to the final defeat of the British Army in Ireland.”

Nolan used to deliver that as a toast, and there was also a donation jar on the bar for Noraid.

According to Mr Mosher, now a university art professor, Nolan “occasionally would bring a dodgy character” – on the run from Interpol? In town to buy guns? – “in during the evening and say ‘Mike, this is Liam. If anyone asks, you never saw him’”.

Mr Mosher added: “I would frequently see journalist Warren Hinckle and his basset hound at the bar.”

Hinckle, aside from drinking at the Dovre Club with his dog, has entered San Francisco folklore, being variously described as the city’s “most notorious and outrageous journalist” and the “godfather of gonzo”.

He helped launch the career of Hunter S Thompson, who also drank at the Dovre Club, by publishing his early articles. He was also an IRA sympathiser, according to the FBI.

But Mr Mosher recounted a plot hatched at the Dovre Club that was more in line with Hinckle’s taste for an extravagant prank than a threat to the Queen’s life.

“The most subversive act I knew of was when Hinckle organised ‘The Irish Republican Navy’ when the Queen and Phillip visited San Francisco in 1983,” he said.

“They hired a small boat and filled it with Chum, chopped-up and fragrant fish, to sail as close to the royal yacht as possible and attract a great number of seagulls,who would then poop upon the royal personages lounging upon their deck. Quantities of liquor may have been present.”

Mr Mosher added: “There may have been a more threatening hooligan afoot, but … makes me think there was typical FBI overreach, lumping the pranksters in with a genuine threat.”

The redactions make the documents unclear, but one reading of the threatening phone call was that it was received at the Dovre Club, which then reported it to the police.

The threat was said to have been from a man whose daughter was fatally shot with a rubber bullet in Northern Ireland.

Of the 17 people killed by rubber or plastic bullets during the Troubles, three were female. All three died, in separate incidents, in 1981. They were Carol Ann Kelly, 12, Julie Livingstone, 14, and Nora McCabe, 30.

There is no suggestion any of their relatives subsequently moved to San Francisco, which calls into question the existence of a plot.

However, it leaves open the possibility that a potential assassin could have been motivated by the three high-profile deaths, and announced his intention in a call to the pub where he drank. Or it could simply have been a prank call.

The FBI files reveal that the agency took the threat very seriously, and also show the depth of anti-British feeling in the city.

In the wake of the reported phone call, the Secret Service decided to close the walkways on the Golden Gate Bridge so there could be no possibility of anything being dropped on the royal yacht.

For the visit, San Francisco’s FBI office activated 20 agents “from the squads which cover presidential assassination statute violations”.

It also contacted all the main charter and sightseeing companies to check who had hired boats around the time Britannia was arriving.

Ultimately, the yacht never passed under the bridge because of a storm.

The Dovre Club itself has since moved from its location in San Francisco’s Women’s Building to a new site a few blocks down the road.

Today, it is a very different, welcoming place with Guinness adverts, posters about Irish history, a map of ancient Ireland and a pool table. The sign calling for the defeat of the British Army is long gone, and there is one saying: “He who rings the bell in jest buys a drink for all the rest.”

When The Telegraph visited, barman Michael Lieber, 52, when told about the unknown caller in the FBI documents, responded: “Was it Warren Hinckle?”

Hinckle, who edited the crusading Left-wing political magazine

Ramparts, had lost an eye in a car accident aged 10 and, along with his large eye patch, wore a bow tie and rain coat. He had a pet monkey that rode on his shoulder and was named “Henry Luce” after the magazine magnate.

The FBI opened a file on Hinckle in 1981 when he launched the American Volunteer Brigade [AVB] for Ireland with a large advert in his new magazine Frisco.

In it he sought to draw an equivalence between American independence and the IRA, showing a picture of George Washington under the headline “Wanted For Terrorism”.

He wrote: “The Thatcher regime has branded the IRA ‘criminals’, much like King George viewed our patriots in the Minutemen [militia members in the American Revolution] 200 years ago.

“The American Volunteer Brigade is being mobilised to assist IRA freedom fighters should Ireland call out to us.”

He planned to place the adverts at all US military reserve bases. He added: “Candidates wishing to enlist in the brigade will please send name and particulars to 3541 18 Street South, San Francisco, California. You will be contacted.” That was the address of the Dovre Club.

According to his FBI file, “Warren Henkel [sic] is a known Irish Republican Army sympathiser and

former reporter for the San Francisco

Chronicle.

“Both Hinkle [sic] and [Pat] Nolan regularly host visiting IRA fundraisers, and lectures. The Dovre Club address has been frequently used as a contact point for IRA activists visiting San Francisco. This office is frequently tasked to report to FBI HQ regarding his activities.”

Hinckle, who died in 2016 aged 77, was described in a New York Times obituary as a “born provocateur with a keen sense of public relations”.

The FBI documents identified two primary protest groups during the Queen’s visit, one of which appears to have been linked to Hinckle .

The first was the “March 3

Coalition”, which was named after Her Majesty’s arrival date. It consisted of “traditional Leftist groups” including the Livermore Action Group, which campaigned for nuclear disarmament, the anti-colonialist American Indian Movement, the trade unionist National Lawyers Guild, and “lesbian groups and other local activists”. An FBI special agent attended its press conferences and kept tabs on its plans.

The FBI was also watching Noraid, for which donations were being taken at the Dovre Club. The classified memo said someone acting for Noraid had been interviewed by the San Francisco Police Department and had “pledged to have demonstrators present at every stop the Queen Elizabeth makes”.

The memo said: “He also indicated he was toying with the idea of having a boat greet the yacht Britannia when it sails under the Golden Gate Bridge.

“On the night of the state dinner [name redacted] is proposing to have a soup line with free beer to illustrate the contrast for the elegance of the state dinner.

“He has made continual references to certain surprises in store for the visitors which could be potentially embarrassing and draw great media attention.”

It would not be a surprise if such stunts had been dreamt up by Hinckle.

The level of concern about the Queen’s time in San Francisco was such that intelligence was shared with the United States Army Intelligence command, the US Coast Guard, and the US State Department Office of Security.

Meanwhile, the Alameda County Sheriff ’s Office Intelligence Unit, in the San Francisco Bay area, reported that it had an asset who had infiltrated the March 3 Coalition and would be “in a position to offer information”.

In the end, the late Queen’s visit was a great success. It included a starstudded event at San Francisco’s De Young Museum with President Ronald Reagan, where Her Majesty also met Steve Jobs, the Apple founder, and Joe DiMaggio, the baseball player, and she also stopped in at Stanford and Hewlett Packard. At Davies Symphony Hall she was serenaded by Tony Bennett.

Outside, a crowd of 1,000 protesters chanted “Queen Go Home” and protested about Northern Ireland. There was no mention in the FBI files of anyone being arrested.

The tour moved on to Yosemite National Park and security concerns appeared to abate somewhat as crowds lined the road to see the Queen.

One onlooker said: “I remember seeing them on Highway 120 on their way to the park. I can still remember her waving to us.”

‘They hired a small boat and filled it with Chum, chopped-up and fragrant fish, to sail close to the royal yacht and attract seagulls to poop on the royal personages’

‘There may have been a more threatening hooligan afoot, but this makes me think there was typical FBI overreach’

‘The Dovre Club address has been frequently used as a contact point for IRA activists in San Francisco’

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