Edward Snowden on history: what the evidence says · JRE #1368

What the evidence says 01 / RECORD

In July 2013, Bolivian President Evo Morales's plane, returning to La Paz from Moscow after a summit where Morales had suggested Bolivia might grant Snowden asylum, was diverted and grounded for more than 13 hours in Vienna, Austria, after France, Spain, Portugal and Italy refused permission to fly over their territories on suspicion Snowden was secretly aboard. French President Francois Hollande later said the refusal stemmed from confusion over the aircraft's identity that was corrected once clarified. Asked directly whether the U.S. played a role, State Department spokesperson Jen Psaki declined to deny it, saying only that U.S. officials had been "in touch with a broad range of countries" in the preceding ten days and would not name them, so direct U.S. instigation of the airspace denials, while consistent with the timeline and widely inferred at the time, was not officially confirmed. The plane was not physically forced down mid-flight; it was diverted from its planned route and grounded on the ground in Vienna, where Austrian officials searched it with Morales's permission, and both Bolivian and Austrian officials confirmed Snowden was not aboard. The claim is substantially supported by contemporaneous reporting, though "brought down" overstates a diversion-and-grounding as a forced landing, and the specific claim of direct U.S. instigation remains inferred rather than officially admitted.