Opinion

Jake O'Kane: The FBI should have known Irish pubs are the natural habitat of lying Irish ex-pats

Surely someone in the FBI should have known Irish pubs are the natural habitat of lying Irish ex-pats, packed with people able to trace their ancestry back to Brian Boru

Jake O'Kane

Jake O'Kane

Jake is a comic, columnist and contrarian.

The towering Golden Gate Bridge was at the centre of a 1983 plot – taken seriously by the FBI, to Jake's incredulity... – in which an Irish man said he was going to kill Queen Elizabeth by dropping something onto her yacht as it passed beneath
The towering Golden Gate Bridge was at the centre of a 1983 plot – taken seriously by the FBI, to Jake's incredulity... – in which an Irish man said he was going to kill Queen Elizabeth by dropping something onto her yacht as it passed ben The towering Golden Gate Bridge was at the centre of a 1983 plot – taken seriously by the FBI, to Jake's incredulity... – in which an Irish man said he was going to kill Queen Elizabeth by dropping something onto her yacht as it passed beneath

I was having my lunch with the BBC news on in the background, only half listening as I happily chomped through my gluten-free sandwich. My attention was caught when the newscaster announced, "Newly released files from the FBI archive detail an assassination threat to Queen Elizabeth during a trip she made to the US in 1983."

Pretty sure neither disgruntled Canadians nor Australians would be behind such a threat, my suspicions were confirmed when it was revealed it had come from an Irishman drinking in a Irish pub in San Francisco.

Considering the year and the fact the queen was visiting California, a state with a massive Irish diaspora, the threat probably wasn’t a surprise to authorities on either side of the Atlantic.

What was surprising was they took a threat emanating from an Irish pub seriously, with things getting even more ridiculous when the plot was revealed.

The first attack on Queen Elizabeth was to occur as the royal yacht arrived in San Francisco when ‘an object’ would be dropped on it from the Golden Gate Bridge.

Most people know that, as one of highest bridges in the world, you’d need a guided missile to have any chance of hitting so small a target. However, the threat was taken seriously as the walkways on the bridge were closed on the day the yacht arrived. I imagine a crestfallen Irishman walking home with a rock in his pocket.

If this first attempt proved unsuccessful, our potential assassins had a fall-back plan in the shape of attacking Queen Elizabeth when she visited California’s famous redwood forests.

Considering their first idea had been to drop a rock from the Golden Gate Bridge, we can presume the geniuses involved planned on cutting down one of the massive redwoods, hoping it would fall on the royal party as they passed.

Surely someone in the FBI should have known Irish pubs are the natural habitat of lying Irish ex-pats – and I speak from experience, having visited such an establishment in New York. Packed with people able to trace their ancestry back to Brian Boru, I somehow picked out a Belfast accent amidst the roar of a hundred conversations. Don’t ask me how this works, it’s like hearing your name in a crowded room.

Pinpointing the man attached to the accent, I was surprised to see it was someone who’d grown up on the same road as me.

On my way over to say hello, I realised he was holding court to an enthralled group of locals who were hanging onto his every word. Deciding it would be rude to interrupt, I patiently waited until he’d finished.

I was close enough to hear that he was relating tall tales of his military adventures for ‘the cause’, back in the ‘old country’. Claiming he’d just managed to escape to the US ahead of an SAS hit squad detailed to shoot him due to him having been such an effective operator in the ‘war’, he cast himself as a cross between Gerry Adams, Gerry Kelly and Rambo, detailing specific instances where, but for his presence, dozens of innocent Catholics would have perished.

I knew the true story: he’d been chased abroad after having been caught selling cannabis – not a healthy career choice in Belfast back in the day.

A scene from the 1959 slice of hokum Darby O’Gill and the Little People, widely regarded as a gritty documentary by many patrons of Irish pubs in the United States...
A scene from the 1959 slice of hokum Darby O’Gill and the Little People, widely regarded as a gritty documentary by many patrons of Irish pubs in the United States... A scene from the 1959 slice of hokum Darby O’Gill and the Little People, widely regarded as a gritty documentary by many patrons of Irish pubs in the United States...

I kept expecting someone to query his blatant nonsense but there wasn’t a peep of incredulity heard from his audience. This group would have believed Darby O’Gill and the Little People was a documentary and rewarded their Celtic warrior with constant trips to the bar, supplying him with Bush and Powers.

Eventually everyone drifted off and I introduced myself. The storyteller was in no way embarrassed when I admitted to having overheard his stories.

Unabashed, he argued his imaginative reinvention of his past offered an important service to Irish Americans, desperate to feel connected to the conflict back home.

While my friend’s tenuous relationship with the truth was innocuous, the fact that the FBI – one of the largest intelligence organisations in the world – gave credence to a threat emanating from an Irish bar proved it was woefully detached from the real world.

Such naivety would come back to haunt the Bureau after 9/11 when they once again demonstrated their gullibility by believing another dissembler called Rafid Ahmed Alwan al-Janabi.

He managed to convince them that Iraq held weapons of mass destruction which led to an invasion, costing the lives of 4,700 US and Allied troops.