Post by Steve Gardner on Feb 22, 2008 9:47:16 GMT
Former US Solicitor General Theodore Olson's accounts of calls he claimed to have received from his wife Barbara from aboard Flight 77 (which allegedly crashed into the Pentagon on 9/11) are a big talking point amongst those who question the 'official' version of events. Not least because the government has effectively admitted the calls were never made.
Before taking a look at this 'admission', here's a recap of the detail.
And here's some more information from another CNN article.
And then Olson started to embellish his account. In an interview with Fox News' Hannity & Colmes three days after 9/11, for example, Ted Olson said, “I found out later that she was having, for some reason, to call collect and was having trouble getting through. You know how it is to get through to a government institution when you’re calling collect.” He says he doesn’t know what kind of phone she used, but he has “assumed that it must have been on the airplane phone, and that she somehow didn’t have access to her credit cards. Otherwise, she would have used her cell phone and called me.”
This presumably being the cell phone Olson had previously and repeatedly asserted she had used.
Now take a look at the amount of detail Ted Olson gives in an interview with Larry King on September 14th about the calls he claims to have received from his wife.
Now the 'admission'.
These screenshots come from a Flash presentation put together by the US government from evidence submitted by the prosecution in the tirla of Zacarias Moussaoui.
The first shows the number of calls allagedly made from aboard Flight 77 and who made them.
The second shows that Barbara Olson's didn't even connect. Not speculation; not conspiracy theory.
Fact.
Note: Anyone wondering whether Olson used someone else's phone - perhaps one of the 5 Unknowns - should be aware that only 4 of those 5 calls connected and they all connected to unknwon numbers. Olson's unconnected call, as you can clearly see, was made to a known number - the Depertment of Justice's.
Before taking a look at this 'admission', here's a recap of the detail.
Although officials said the attacks appeared to have been well planned and executed, a passenger on the plane that hit the Pentagon said in cell phone call to her husband that the terrorists were armed with knives and box cutters.
The passenger was Barbara Olson, a CNN commentator and wife of Solicitor General Theodore Olson. (source: CNN
And here's some more information from another CNN article.
WASHINGTON -- Barbara Olson, a conservative commentator and attorney, alerted her husband, Solicitor General Ted Olson, that the plane she was on was being hijacked Tuesday morning, Ted Olson told CNN.
A short time later the plane crashed into the Pentagon. Barbara Olson is presumed to have died in the crash.
Her husband said she called him twice on a cell phone from American Airlines Flight 77, which was en route from Washington Dulles International Airport to Los Angeles.
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.
Ted Olson notified the Justice Department command center immediately. (source: CNN
And then Olson started to embellish his account. In an interview with Fox News' Hannity & Colmes three days after 9/11, for example, Ted Olson said, “I found out later that she was having, for some reason, to call collect and was having trouble getting through. You know how it is to get through to a government institution when you’re calling collect.” He says he doesn’t know what kind of phone she used, but he has “assumed that it must have been on the airplane phone, and that she somehow didn’t have access to her credit cards. Otherwise, she would have used her cell phone and called me.”
This presumably being the cell phone Olson had previously and repeatedly asserted she had used.
Now take a look at the amount of detail Ted Olson gives in an interview with Larry King on September 14th about the calls he claims to have received from his wife.
OLSON: Both. The second one had just occurred, I think, when I had turned it on, but they occurred in such a fashion they had film of it, which as this station -- I think I was watching CNN. And I was relieved because at the moment that I heard there was hijacked planes, I was both terrified and fearful for everything that was going on. But I made a mental calculation, because the first thing that comes in to your mind is that Barbara's plane, could that be one of those planes? And I thought oh, thank goodness, it can't be her plane. I'm sounding rather selfish here. That just went through my mind because there wasn't enough time for that airplane to have gotten to New York.
Then one of the secretaries rushed in and said, "Barbara is on the phone." And I jumped for the phone, so glad to hear Barbara's voice. And then she told me, "Our plane has been hijacked." This was some time -- must have been 9:15 or 9:30. Someone would have to reconstruct the time for me.
KING: So the television is on. You've see the buildings, both in disaster mode, and you are talking to your wife who has just been hijacked.
OLSON: Yes.
KING: And she says?
OLSON: She says we have just been hijacked. I had two conversations, Larry, and my memory is -- tends to mix the two of them up because of the emotion of the events. We spoke for a minute or two, then the phone was cut off. Then we she got through again, and we spoke for another two or three or four minutes. She told me that the plane had been hijacked, that she had been -- she told me that they did not know she was making this phone call.
She told me that she had been herded to the back of the plane. She mentioned that they had used knives and box cutters to hijack the plane. She mentioned that the pilot had announced that the plane had been hijacked. I believe she said that. And she -- I had to tell her about the two airplanes that had hit the World Trade Center.
KING: Why?
OLSON: I just felt that I had to. I had to tell her. I will look back at that and wonder about that same question myself, but I had to tell her.
KING: You're the kind of couple, knowing you guys, you tell each other everything.
OLSON: We are extraordinary close.
KING: This was a mad love affair?
OLSON: Yes, it was. I could not have kept that from her.
KING: What did she say when you told her?
OLSON: I think she must have been partially in shock from the fact that she was on a hijacked plane. She absorbed the information. We then both reassured one another this plane was still up in the air. This plane was still flying, and this was going to come out OK. I told her, "It's going to come out OK." She told me it was going to come out OK. She said, I love you.
KING: Didn't she ask about the pilot? Was the pilot in the back with her then?
OLSON: I don't know. But she told me at one point in this conversation: "What shall I tell the pilot? What can I tell the pilot to do?"
KING: Implying he must have been back there with her.
OLSON: Either the pilot or possibly the copilot or part of the crew. That was the implication, but I didn't really think to ask that specific question.
KING: Did she sound terrified, anxious, nervous, scared?
OLSON: No, she didn't. She sounded very, very calm.
KING: Typical Barbara.
OLSON: In retrospect, enormously, remarkably, incredibly calm. But she was calculating -- I mean, she was wondering "What can I do to help solve this problem?" Barbara was like that. Barbara could not have not done something.
KING: What's going through you?
OLSON: My -- I am in -- I guess I'm in shock. And I'm horrified because I really -- while I had reassured her that I thought everything was going to be OK, I was pretty sure everything was not going to be OK. I by this time, had made the calculation that these were suicide persons, bent on destroying as much of America as they could.
KING: Did you hear other noises on the plane?
OLSON: No, I did not. At one point, when she asked me what to say to the pilot, I asked her if she had any sense for where she was. I had, after the first conversation, called our command center at the Department of Justice to alert them to the fact that there was another hijacked plane and that my wife was on it and that she was capable of communicating, even though this first phone call had been cut off.
So I wanted to find out where the plane was. She said the plane had been high hijacked shortly after takeoff and they had been circling around, I think were the words she used. She reported to me that she could see houses. I asked her which direction the plane was going. She paused -- there was a pause there. I think she must have asked someone else. She said I think it's going northeast.
KING: Which would have been toward the Pentagon?
OLSON: Depending upon where the plane was, .
KING: Dulles...
OLSON: Dulles is west of the Pentagon. So east of Dulles is the Pentagon. And this plane had been in the air for, I think, over an hour. So I don't know where she was when she called.
KING: They didn't do any direct flight right to the Pentagon.
OLSON: No, no. Her plane took off at 8:10. Its impact with the Pentagon must have been around 9:30 or so. You will probably be able to reconstruct that or have that information as to the time of the impact.
KING: How does the second conversation end?
OLSON: We are -- we segued back and forth between expressions of feeling for one another and this effort to exchange information. And then the phone went dead. I don't know whether it just got cut off again, because the signals from cell phones coming from airplanes don't work that well, or whether that was the impact with the Pentagon.
Now the 'admission'.
These screenshots come from a Flash presentation put together by the US government from evidence submitted by the prosecution in the tirla of Zacarias Moussaoui.
The first shows the number of calls allagedly made from aboard Flight 77 and who made them.
The second shows that Barbara Olson's didn't even connect. Not speculation; not conspiracy theory.
Fact.
Note: Anyone wondering whether Olson used someone else's phone - perhaps one of the 5 Unknowns - should be aware that only 4 of those 5 calls connected and they all connected to unknwon numbers. Olson's unconnected call, as you can clearly see, was made to a known number - the Depertment of Justice's.
