The Barbara Olson Call

“It is easy to imagine an infinite number of situations . . . where government officials might quite legitimately have reasons to give false information out.  It’s an unfortunate reality that the issuance of incomplete information and even misinformation by government may sometimes be perceived as necessary to protect vital interests.”[i]

                     — US Solicitor-General Ted Olson

Who was Barbara Olson?

Mrs. Olson was a combative right-winger, and CNN TV pundit, representing the conservative Republican point-of-view. 

She was the third wife of an even more hawkish right-winger, Theodore B. Olson, an appellate lawyer who argued the Florida election sham for George W. Bush before the Supreme Court.  President Bush had appointed him Solicitor-General after Olson persuaded the Supreme Court to appoint his election-losing client to the Presidency by a margin of one vote.

Barbara and Ted Olson (Photos: CNN & USDOJ).

A lawyer as well, Barbara attended the Jewish Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law at Yeshiva University.  She served as chief counsel for the House Government Reform and Oversight Committee’s Republican majority from 1995 to 1996.

Mrs. Olson led the investigation into President Bill Clinton and Hillary Rodham Clinton’s role in firing longtime employees of the White House travel office.  She became a caustic and relentless critic of the Clintons.  Mrs. Olson wrote Hell to Pay (Regnery, 1999), a highly critical book about Mrs. Clinton.  Her publisher, Alfred S. Regnery, was also a Flight 77 witness at the Pentagon. (How’s that for publisher support!)

 She made an 11^th hour change of her itinerary, to get on the Flight 77.

Her bogus call was a deliberate ploy by the neocon’s to make the official connection to Flight 77 as the hijacked jet that hit the Pentagon.

The government knew that the Flight 77 fable was rather weak and needed some additional bolstering.  “Her description of what was occurring in her last moments provided what officials said was valuable information about the incident.”  Her call, reported on the next day, was crucial in establishing the existence of terrorists on the flight and that they possessed dangerous weapons.  Later, the identity of the plane that hit the Pentagon would hinge on it. 

Soon thereafter, CNN had propagated the story around the world.

This narrative originated in the Department of Justice and was carried by CNN, just 16 hours after Olson’s loss.  It went as follows:

Shortly afterwards Flight 77 crashed into the Pentagon…  Ted Olson told CNN that his wife said all passengers and flight personnel, including the pilots, were herded to the back of the plane by armed hijackers.  The only weapons she mentioned were knives and cardboard cutters.  She felt nobody was in charge and asked her husband to tell the pilot what to do.”

“We’ve been hijacked,” Barbara Olson, a former prosecutor, said into her cell phone as she sat huddled with other passengers forced by knife-wielding assailants to the back of the jetliner.¹³⁰

Ted Olson told CNN, that his wife said she reported that the flight crew had been herded to the back of the plane with the passengers, and she asked her husband what she should tell the pilot who was apparently beside her while the hijackers were in control of the cockpit.  Burlingame was a decorated war veteran and long-time Pentagon liaison officer.  What advice could Ted Olson possibly offer him?

Were 757’s even equipped with in-flight satellite phones?

This was posted on the American Airlines website, just after 9/11:

Turn flight time into quality time by arranging meetings, calling your broker or calling home.  Worldwide satellite communications are available on American Airlines’ Boeing 777 and Boeing 767 aircraft almost anytime while flying over North America and worldwide.[ii]

[Sorry, Ted, no phones.]

A credit card is needed to activate the AirPhone.

But even if there were AirPhones on that American Airlines’ flight, there are other problems.  For instance, there is a telephone setup charge of $ 2.50, which can only be paid by credit card, then a $ 2.50 charge per minute afterwards.  The setup charge is the activation process (the AirPhone is a much use as a plastic toy without the swipe).  Without paying it in advance by swiping your credit card you cannot access the external telephone network.  Even if Barbara Olson borrowed a credit card from another passenger, once swiped through the phone, the credit card would have enabled her to call whoever she wanted to for as long as she liked, negating any requirement to call collect.

Only built-in satellite phones work in airliners that are flying.  Not cell phones.

Canadian tests have shown that over 8,000 ft altitude, the likelihood of making a connection is remote.   Moreover, American Airlines, (which operated Flight 77) announced an experimental innovation in 2004 that would enable in-flight mobile calls.  In essence it is similar to having a cell tower in the aircraft, this in turn, is connected to a satellite system.

Professor Dewdney’s experiments in Canada persuasively showed that mobile handsets’ efficacy diminished with altitude until at over 8,000 feet they were extremely unreliable.  Why would American Airlines pay for an experimental system to try enabling them in 2004, if they already worked?  The phones on the Boeing 757 rely on either ground cell phone towers or satellite bounce in order to maintain a stable connection.  At very low altitude and extreme speed, the violent changes in aircraft attitude would render the normal telephone links completely unusable.

None of her calls could ever be verified!

The Kean Commission, in typical cover-up fashion, addresses the sceptics of the notorious call.  Apparently all calls from Flight 77 were all made to an unknown number (How convenient!):

The records available for the phone calls from American 77 do not allow for a determination of which of four “connected calls to unknown number” represent the two between Barbara and Ted Olson.[iii]

From the FBI report, American Airlines Telephone Usage, 9/20/01, the four calls were at:

9:15:34 for 1 minute, 42 seconds.

9:20:15 for 4 minutes, 34 seconds.

9:25:48 for 2 minutes, 34 seconds.

9:30:34 for 4 minutes, 20 seconds.

The last call ends at almost 9:35; thus the reason why the Commission had to alter the time of the attack from 9:31 a.m. to 9:38 a.m.

This amazing story is an ever-changing chameleon.

• Ted Olson fails to name the person who took the original call.
• Olson first said that she used a cell phone, but when people started saying that cell phones wouldn’t work…
• Next, he changed his story to AirPhones.  The problem was he had already said she was in the bathroom when she called.
• But that can’t be true either, because AirPhone cords don’t reach to the bathroom.  Then he said…
• She might not have been in the bathroom, he only thought she was because the background noise was quiet.
• Olson’s told the Daily Telegraph six months later, that Mrs Olson had wasted a lot of time trying to call collect because she had no credit card to use on the AirPhone?  But, you can’t use the AirPhone at all without a credit card.  Period.  The reason that Ted Olson couldn’t say she used a credit card is that would show on her monthly statement.  This would show he was a fraud.
• Later, Olson stated, his wife had claimed her mobile was in her handbag stowed away, and she did not have her credit card available. 

Amazingly, only moments from possible death — nobody else wanted to call a loved one!

Why was no one else using any in-flight phone to make a call to a husband, wife, or family member? All other passengers are silent.  Why would the hijackers who were on a suicide mission, allow only one of the 56 passengers, Barbara Olson?  Let alone, she makes three calls!

Olson’s fable was never backed up with any evidence.

Interestingly, Ted Olson could never produce the Department of Justice’s telephone accounts, which would clearly show a few reverse-charges entries charged from Flight 77’s AirPhone.

It seems Ted Olson had time to report the call to the Department of Justice Command Centre, between her calls.  The Olson’s phone call to Ashcroft was “unsuccessful”.  So that’s another untraceable call, leaving no records.

Ted Olson said that he then switched on his TV and started watching the crisis coverage as the department was hurriedly evacuated.  Who, then, was making a call from Flight 77 after it crashed into the Pentagon?  The phone call last 4 minutes longer than the evidenced-based time of the Pentagon attack! 

Why did American Airlines supply the records to the FBI?  Why didn’t they get the records from the telecom company who provided service to the AirPhones?  Only they are the ones who have any records of phone activity that had been charged to the clients. 

Among those who gathered at Olson’s house to mourn with the widower, was long-time friend CNN correspondent Tim O’Brien.  Was this not the nonchalant way to plant a phone-call story with CNN?

Barbara Olson’s call from Flight 77 never happened…

The story was a lie that needed to constantly change, in efforts to not get cornered in phone call records.  Everything in the 9/11 narrative traces back to this one report from Ted Olson, and his “interview” by the FBI on the very same day.  CNN launched the legend of the terrorist hijackers with knives and cardboard cutters.  All the corporate networks jumped in on the feeding frenzy.  And Barbara Olson became the tragic hero who had died trying to warn everyone about the hijackers.

At 9:15 Renee May makes a call on a cell phone.

The Commission says that flight attendant Renee May called her parents on a mobile phone at about 9:15 a.m., when Flight 77 was lost.  But, again a successful cell phone connection can’t be made from an airliner at cruising altitude.  Also, Flight 77 at 9:15 a.m. was supposed to be over the Allegheny mountains, an under-populated area only sparsely served by mobile networks.  The only evidence the Commission seems to have for this call is an FBI report.  Ms. May’s Verizon bill would be more convincing, and could have easily enough been obtained and put into the Commission’s report.  There has never been evidence provided to substantiate in the least, these cell phone calls from any of the flights.

Cell phone use on airlines slated for 2007!

On March 31, 2006, on MSNBC, American Airlines announced that for the first time, starting next year (2007), they would be offering the service of being able to use cell phones on their flights![iv]