http://www.oprah.com/tows/pastshows/tows_past_20010920_slid07.jhtmlUnbeknown to the hijackers, passenger and political commentator Barbara Olson, 45, was able to call her husband -- Solicitor General Ted Olson -- on her CELLULAR PHONE.
http://www.cnn.com/2002/US/09/03/ar911.phone.calls/
Olson was among the passengers of American Airlines Flight 77, which was hijacked and flown into the Pentagon on Sept. 11. Before the crash, she managed to call her husband, Solicitor General Ted Olson, twice on her cellphone, relaying bits of information about the hijacking -- it was from Olson that the world first learned about the use of "box cutters" as a weapon -- and asking his advice, he later recalled on "Larry King Live," about "what she should tell the pilot."
It's an unimaginable situation. And simply because of the way she kept her wits about her, Olson deserves to be honored for her ability to tough it out the best she could, making virtually the only record we have of what happened on that particular doomed ride.
http://archive.salon.com/books/review/2001/11/19/olson/
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.
http://www.cnn.com/2001/US/09/11/pentagon.olson/
A second American plane, Flight 77 from Dulles, Va., to Los Angeles, a Boeing 757, crashed into the Pentagon at 9:43. There were 58 passengers, four flight attendants and two pilots aboard. Fox News commentator Barbara Olson, a former congressional staffer and Republican activist, was on the plane. Officials said she made two phone calls to her husband, Solicitor General Ted Olson, from her CELL PHONE before the crash. Olson told her husband that the plane had been hijacked by terrorists wielding "knife-like" instruments.
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,34177,00.html
Associates of her husband said after she and the other passengers were herded into the back of the plane, SHE PULLED OUT HER CELL PHONE AND TWICE CALLED HER HUSBAND'S OFFICE at the Justice Department. When she reached her husband, she told him the plane was being hijacked and urged him to quickly call the FBI.
CNN, the network for whom Mrs. Olson worked, reported that she also told her husband that the hijackers were wielding knives and cardboard cutters and that their motives were not readily apparent.
http://usatoday.com/news/nation/2001/09/11/victims-olson.htm
American Airlines flight 77 was traveling from Washington to Los Angeles before it slammed into the pentagon. Television commentator Barbara Olsen was on the plane. She called her husband, Ted Olsen, the US solicitor general, telling him the attackers had knife- like weapons apparently made with razor blades. Her CELL PHONE then went dead, she called back asking her husband for advice on how to handle the dire situation. The phone went dead again and that was the last Ted heard from her.
http://www.insideedition.com/inside_plane.htm
Barbara Olson kept her cool. In the hysteria and terror of hijackers herding passengers to the rear of the plane, SHE RETRIEVED HER CELL PHONE and called her husband, Ted, the solicitor general of the United States. She informed him that he had better call the FBI — the plane had been hijacked. According to reports, Barbara was still on the phone with Ted when her plane plunged in a fiery explosion directly into the Pentagon.
Barbara risked having her neck slit to warn the country of a terrorist attack. She was a patriot to the very end.
This is not to engage in the media's typical hallucinatory overstatement about anyone who is the victim of a horrible tragedy. The FURTIVE CELL PHONE call was an act of incredible daring and panache. If it were not, we'd be hearing reports of a hundred more cell phone calls. (Even people who swear to hate cell phones carry them for commercial air travel.)
http://www.nationalreview.com/coulter/coulter091301.shtml
There was not even the grace of instant death. Instead, there was time to call from the sky over Virginia, fingers pumping CELL PHONES, terrified passengers talking to loved ones for one final time.
Herded to the back of the plane by hijackers armed with knives and box-cutters, THE PASSENGERS AND CREW MEMBERS of American Airlines Flight 77 -- INCLUDING THE WIFE OF SOLICITOR GENERAL THEODORE OLSON, a Senate staffer, three D.C. schoolchildren and three teachers on an educational field trip and a University Park family of four headed to Australia for a two-month adventure -- WERE ORDERED TO CALL RELATIVES to say they were about to die.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn?pagename=article&node=metro/dc/schools&contentId=A14365-2001Sep11¬Found=true
Mrs Olson told him that her plane had been hijacked and that the passengers and crew, including the pilots, had been herded to the back of the plane by hijackers armed with knives and box-cutters.
She said THE HIJACKERS DID NOT KNOW SHE WAS CALLING ON THE PHONE. She asked him what she should tell the pilot.
http://straitstimes.asia1.com.sg/mnt/html/webspecial/WTC/wtcnews215.html
One friend, speaking on condition of anonymity, said BARBARA OLSON USED HER CELLULAR PHONE TWICE TO CALL HER HUSBAND from American Flight 77, which was headed from Washington to Los Angeles.
She reportedly said, “Can you believe this? We are being hijacked.” Law enforcement officials said she also reported that the attackers brandished knifelike instruments.
Her husband confirmed the reports that she was in the midst of the hijacking. “I wish it wasn't so, but it is,” he said.
http://www.msnbc.com/news/627249.asp
Washington - Cowering in the back of a hijacked airplane yesterday, Barbara Olson made a frantic last-minute phone call to her husband, U.S. Solicitor General Theodore Olson.
Moments before the Los Angeles-bound American Airlines flight slammed into the Pentagon, Barbara Olson, a well-known conservative, told her husband that the plane had been hijacked by a group of men wielding knives and cardboard cutters, said family friend Bob McConnell. She made no mention of guns or other weapons, McConnell said.
Talking to her husband by CELL PHONE at his Justice Department office, Barbara Olson asked him what she should tell the pilot to do, possibly indicating that the pilot was in the back of the plane, where hijackers had shepherded the 58 passengers.
"He didn't know what to do," McConnell said of Theodore Olson, though he was aware from TV reports that another plane had earlier slammed into the World Trade Center.
http://www.newsday.com/ny-usols122362099sep12,0,278898.story
On the day she died, Barbara Olson had delayed her planned flight so that she could have breakfast with her husband on his 61st birthday. Shortly after take-off, she called the Justice Department, where her husband worked, to say that the aircraft had been hijacked and the passengers had been herded into the back.
SHE HAD LOCKED HERSELF IN THE LAVATORY AND HAD TO CALL 10 TIMES BEFORE SHE COULD PERSUADE THE OPERATORS TO ACCEPT THE CALL CHARGES. Her last words to her husband - who had time to tell her that two planes had already hit the World Trade Centre - were "What do I tell the pilot to do?"
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2001/09/14/db01.xml
You would think that the telephone operators would be interested in a hijacking, now wouldn't you?
I mean, Flight 93 got a bit more interest and cooperation from the telephone company and local police.
An unnamed passenger on the same flight (93) locked himself in one of the plane's lavatories and called 911. Dispatchers who answered the phone said he repeatedly said: "We are being hijacked, we are being hijacked, this is not a hoax."
"He heard some sort of explosion and saw white smoke coming from the plane and we lost contact with him," said Westmoreland dispatcher Glenn Cramer.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/1540158.stm
Now, the interesting part is that pilots and others in the FAA do not like, and expressly forbid, the usage of cellphones aboard aircraft. Cell phones are widely believed to interfere with the electronics within the aircraft and this interference can cause the pilot to lose control of the plane resulting in a crash.
Why would a terrorist or anyone else for that matter, risk losing control of the situation they had gone to great lengths to gain control of? They were not squeamish about killing people, so why the sudden consideration for the families yet to be left behind?
If they were supposed to be using the plane as a weapon, then they would be most anxious to keep control of the flight mechanism. It is therefore incredible that a hijacker would expressly instruct the passengers huddled together in the back of the aircraft to commence making calls on their cell phones. What is far more likely is that the pilots, or someone who watched the Lone Gunmen was trying to jam what the plane's controls. This would tally with BOTH LIVE pilots also being in the back of the plane and not knowing what to do. It would also indicate that the plane was in effect, flying itself and that no-one aboard was actually in charge.
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.
http://www.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0109/14/lkl.00.html
Barbara Olson, 46, was locked in the toilet when the passengers and crew were ordered to the back of the airliner. A spokesman for Mr Olson said: "She called and said she was locked in the toilet and the plane had been hijacked.
"She said they had knives. They had rounded up the passengers at the back of the plane. She referred to them as more than one. There was nothing she could do. She said to her husband: 'What do I do?'"
The call ended seconds BEFORE the crash.
<snip>
Mrs Olson had placed TWO CALLS from the plane - THE FIRST to the Justice Department, where her husband worked, TO INFORM THE AUTHORITIES OF THE HIJACKING.
The fact that the crew were ordered to join the passengers indicated that the hijackers included trained pilots capable of aiming the aircraft at their targets.
Mrs Olson THEN PHONED HER HUSBAND, who is known primarily for having argued the case for President Bush before the US Supreme Court last year during his election recount contest with Al Gore.
She asked her husband what she should tell the pilot to do. "It was typical of her," one friend said. "She was always the type to try to take charge."
A witness to the crash, Mike Walter, said: "It was like a Cruise missile with wings.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2001/09/12/wwife12.xml
This is the initial hole in the Pentagon wall.
Oserve the size. Observe the debris.
Observe the color of the flame and the smoke.
And now that we have firmly established that it was indeed a cell phone that was used by Barbara Olson (Olsen?) on that fateful day, let us now see what her husband has to say about the matter.
Then his secretary told him that Barbara was on the line. "My first reaction when I heard she was on the phone was relief, because I knew that she wasn't on one of those two airplanes." But Barbara then explained calmly that she had been herded to the back of the Boeing 757 she was on, along with the other passengers.
"She had had trouble getting through, because SHE WASN'T USING HER CELL PHONE, SHE WAS USING THE PHONE IN THE PASSENGER'S SEATS," says Olson. "I guess she didn't have her purse, because she was calling collect, and she was trying to get through to the Department of Justice, which is never very easy."
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/family/main.jhtml?xml=/family/2002/03/05/folsen05.xml
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.
http://www.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0109/14/lkl.00.html
I have said it before and I will say it again, the whole Pentagon thing is a total mess and every single story you hear changes more times than a chameleon walking across plaid.
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9/11, Military Affairs, and Terrorism (Protected)
