General Discussion
In reply to the discussion: Spain says U.S. tipoff led it to query Bolivian flight [View all]struggle4progress
(126,993 posts)an explanation from the US regarding Snowden's allegations that the US was spying on Europe. That's a serious diplomatic move, and as a general rule it's going to get a serious response
It seems rather unlikely to me that the day after Austria summoned Eacho, the US would have demanded Austria search a plane for Snowden; and it would have been grossly undiplomatic and hence risky for Eacho to have tried something like that
A more credible explanation might be that Eacho wrote a careful report to Foggy Bottom the day before regarding the issues Austria wanted answered, that draft responses were studied and discussed most of the next day in DC, and that before CoB on that second day, Eacho received his instructions on how Washington wanted him to respond, so he immediately called up his Austrian contacts to say he had Washington's response and wanted to provide it ASAP: how early tomorrow could they meet him? But it's six (6) hours later in Vienna than in DC, so his phone call is mid-evening. Normally that might be unusual, but in this case it might not be