How the hunt for Edward Snowden, and bad information, stranded Bolivian president

BERLIN -- The diplomatic row between the United States and Bolivia began before Friday, when Bolivian President Evo Morales started talking about kicking the U.S. Embassy out of his country.

It began before Italian, French, Spanish and Portuguese airspace was closed to Morales? presidential jet, forcing him to land and spend 13 unplanned hours in Vienna during a trip home from Moscow.

It even began before U.S. officials apparently asked their allies to close their airspace and airports to that private jet.

According to Russian news reports, quoting those they described as sources within the Russian Security Services, it began when an American official failed to notice that the target of their hunt ? fugitive former National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden ? was at one airport and the Bolivian presidential jet was taking off from another, about 35 miles of horrible Moscow traffic away.

From official statements and news reports, it?s possible to cobble together the flight of Morales? official Bolivian air force Dassault Falcon 900EX from Moscow to La Paz and how it became an unprecedented diplomatic incident when it was denied rights late Tuesday to cross through the airspace of four European countries for a needed refueling stop, for fear that the Bolivian president was carrying Snowden to asylum.

Bolivia has referred the matter to the United Nations, South American governments are expressing outrage and the United States is trying hard to distance itself from the affair.

By the time Morales? jet took off from Moscow?s Vnukovo International Airport, Snowden had been holed up for nine days in the international transit area of Sheremetyevo International Airport, across town from Vnukovo.

Worries that Morales, who was in Moscow for a conference of natural gas-producing nations, might try to spirit Snowden away from international limbo and American justice ? Snowden is facing espionage charges for leaking classified documents he accessed through NSA computers ? stemmed from remarks the Bolivian president made to Russian television in which he noted his country?s willingness to ?shield the denounced.?

?If there were a request made, of course we would be willing to debate and consider the idea,? he said of Snowden?s search for a haven.

But sneaking Snowden onto the Bolivian plane wouldn?t have been a simple matter. As the Russian news service RIA Novosti reported, quoting an unnamed source in the Russian Security Services: ?Snowden could not have gotten into the president?s plane. A transfer from Sheremetyevo to Vnukovo is possible only by crossing into the territory of Russia, for which Snowden would have required a transit visa. However, he is not in the possession of such a visa, and we have no information of him crossing into the territory of Russia.?

The flight home to La Paz was 7,770 miles. The presidential Falcon has a range of about 5,000 miles, so the plan was to refuel in Spain?s Canary Islands before flying across the Atlantic.

The jet lifted off just after 8:30 p.m. in Moscow on Tuesday. About two and half hours later, it entered Austrian airspace, having crossed Russia, Belarus, Poland and the Czech Republic without incident.

After the plane had flown over most of Austria, its pilot was told that it couldn?t pass into Italian, French, Portuguese or Spanish airspace, according to the Bolivian government. The pilot was forced to make a hairpin turn only a short time before the plane would have left the skies above Austria. In a recording of the pilot talking to the Vienna control tower sometime around 9:30 p.m., he said, ?We need to land. . . . We can?t get a correct fuel indication.?

Source: http://www.miamiherald.com/2013/07/05/3486761/how-the-hunt-for-edward-snowden.html

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