<b>
In fact, one of the most bizarre ironies of all this is that five of the hijackers lived in a motel right outside the gates of the NSA.<br>
Early on the morning of 11 September, when Hani Hanjour and his four accomplices left the Valencia Motel on US route 1 on their way to Washington's Dulles airport, they joined the stream of NSA employees heading to work.<br>
Three hours later, they had turned flight 77 around and slammed it into the Pentagon.</b><br>
<a href="http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/programmes/from_our_own_correspondent/2033791.stm">http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/programmes/from_our_own_correspondent/2033791.stm</a>
<p>
<p><a href="http://www.cooperativeresearch.org/timeline/2001/foxnews091401.html"><b>Interview With Ted Olson</b></a><br>
by Alan Colmes, Sean Hannity, and Brit Hume<br>
Fox News - Hannity and Colmes<br>
September 14, 2001 <br>
[transcript] <b>excerpts</b>
BRIT HUME, FOX ANCHOR: Ted, your wife's name was the first victim's name that
we heard from the crash at the Pentagon site. And I know that she spoke to you. <br>
<br>I'd like to convey, on behalf of all of us here, our condolences to you and
our best wishes to you, sir.
<br>TED OLSON, SOLICITOR GENERAL: Thank you.
One of the gals in my office came in and said, "Barbara's on the phone."
And I picked up the phone. We spoke for a couple of -- maybe a minute or two
before we were cut off.<br>
HUME: Did you have a clear...<br>
OLSON: It was clear.<br>
It was cut off. And then a few moments later, we had another telephone conversation
that lasted for three or four minutes. I was at first relieved to hear Barbara
on the telephone, because panic strikes immediately. My wife had taken off on
a plane. Two airplanes had crashed into the World Trade Center. I, of course,
like any other person, felt potentially devastated, panicky a little bit.<br>
And I made a calculation that it couldn't possibly -- that airplane couldn't
possibly have gotten to New York, although it could have been close. But then
to hear her voice was reassuring and calming. But then her next words out of
her mouth were that, "Ted, my plane's been hijacked."
<br>HUME: Now, was she calm?
<br>OLSON: She was very calm. She was completely in control.
<br>HUME: Was she sort of whispering? Or was she speaking in a normal voice.
<br>OLSON: No, she was speaking loud enough that I could hear her. I didn't feel
that she was whispering. I said -- I asked her a couple of questions. And I'm
not sure now the sequence in which I asked those questions.
<br>But I learned from her that she had been in first class. She had been -- she
and the other passengers had been herded to the back of the airplane. I asked
her whether they, the hijackers, knew that she was calling. And she said, "No,
they don't know."
<br>She indicated that they had used knifes and box-cutters to take over the plane.
At some point, we got cut off. I immediately called the command center of the
Department of Justice to let them know that my wife was on a plane that had
been hijacked. I mainly wanted them know there was another hijacked plane out
there. I didn't know whether anyone in...
<br>HUME: What did they say when you called them?
<br>OLSON: They just absorbed the information. And they promised to send someone
down right away. I didn't know that I was going to get another call. And I expected
them to pass the information on to the appropriate people. I assumed that they
did.<br>
A few minutes later, another call came in from Barbara. 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.
<br>HUME: With a collect call, right.
<br>OLSON: Well, she managed to -- Barbara was capable of doing practically anything
if she set her mind to it. In retrospect, I'm not surprised that Barbara managed
to get collect calls through.
<br>HUME: You don't know whether it was on a regular cell phone or one of those
air phones?
<br>OLSON: No, I don't. I first of all 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.
<br>HUME: Of course.
<br>OLSON: So I think that was probably what it was. But Barbara got through a
second time. And we exchanged the feelings that a husband and wife who are extraordinarily
close, as we are, those kind of sentiments. And she assured me everything was
going to be OK. I told her in the first conversation that the two hijacked planes
had hit the World Trade Center.
<br>And my impulse was that I had to tell her that. That was the kind of person
she was. That's the kind of relationship that we had. I will always wonder whether
I should have. But she -- her instinct was: "What do we do? What do we
tell -- what shall I tell the pilot? What can I do?"
<br>And I asked her where she was. And she tried to tell me where she was and what
direction the aircraft appeared to be going.
<br>HUME: It was probably hard to tell.
<br>OLSON: I think it's impossible to tell. We've all looked out the window and
we don't know exactly where we are. She said there were residences she could
see. And she speculated that the aircraft was headed northeast. But I don't
know whether that was correct or whether she really knew that or whether someone
had told her that.
<br>HUME: Did she describe the hijackers or say what they had said or anything
of that kind?
<br>OLSON: No. She -- the only thing she said with respect to that is the pilot
had announced that the plane had been hijacked. She said it had been hijacked
shortly after takeoff. By this time, the plane had been in the air -- again,
I'm presuming that it took off on time -- for over an hour.
<br>She implied that they had been circling around for a while. Not long after
after
the second phone call, the connection was broken, by what I don't know. I was
watching television in my office both before, after, and during these telephone
calls. I began to hear reports of the explosion at the Pentagon. And I knew
in my heart that was that aircraft.<br>
<a href="http://www.prospect.org/print-friendly/print/V13/9/kaminer-w.html">
"There are lots of different situations when the government has legitimate reasons to give out false information," <br>Solicitor General Theodore Olson told the U.S. Supreme Court in March, 2002.</a><br>
"the story seems to have matured a lot since the first decoy news release by CNN early on September 12, 2001. <a href="http://www.cnn.com/2001/US/09/11/pentagon.olson/">http://www.cnn.com/2001/US/09/11/pentagon.olson/</a>
Here we have considerably more detail, some of which is frankly impossible. In the alleged words of US Solicitor General Theodore Olson:
“She [Barbara] had trouble getting through, because she wasn’t using her cell phone – she was using the phone in the passengers’ seats,” said Mr 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.” … “She wanted to know ‘What can I tell the pilot? What can I do? How can I stop this?’ ”
"What Can I tell the pilot?" Yes indeed! The forged Barbara Olson telephone call claims that the flight deck crew were with her at the back of the aircraft, presumably politely ushered down there by the box cutter-wielding Muslim maniacs, who for some bizarre reason decided not to cut their throats on the flight deck. Have you ever heard anything quite so ridiculous?
But it is at this juncture that we finally have the terminal error. Though the American Airlines Boeing 757 is fitted with individual telephones at each seat position, they are not of the variety where you can simply pick up the handset and ask for an operator. On many aircraft you can talk from one seat to another in the aircraft free of charge, but if you wish to access the outside world you must first swipe your credit card through the telephone. By Ted Olson’s own admission, Barbara did not have a credit card with her.
It gets worse. On American Airlines there is a telephone "setup" charge of US$2.50 which can only be paid by credit card, then a US$2.50 (sometimes US$5.00) charge per minute of speech thereafter. The setup charge is the crucial element. Without paying it in advance by swiping your credit card you cannot access the external telephone network. Under these circumstances the passengers’ seat phone on a Boeing 757 is a much use as a plastic toy.
Perhaps Ted Olson made a mistake and Barbara managed to borrow a credit card from a fellow passenger? Not a chance. If Barbara had done so, 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.
Sadly perhaps, the Olson telephone call claim is proved untrue. Any American official wishing to challenge this has only to subpoena the telephone company and Justice Department records. There will be no charge originating from American Airlines 77 to the US Solicitor General.
Even without this hard proof, the chances of meaningfully using a seat-telephone on Flight 77 were nil."<br>
<a href="http://www.geocities.com/subliminalsuggestion/olson.html">THE MOTHER OF ALL LIES ABOUT 9/11 - Barbara Olson's Phone Call From Flight 77</a><br>
<b>(Here's a the relevant footnote from the 9/11 Commission
report.....seems to me that they confirm that calls were made from seatback
phones, but they don't bother to disclose whether they checked if the calls
were billed to a credit card(s)....or if there were collect calls billed to the<br> Justice Dept. This reveals that the Commission was not interested in obtaining real confirmation that Barbara Olson made any calls from Flt. 77.)<br>
"57.The records available for the phone calls from American 77 do not allow for a determination of which of four "connected calls to unknown numbers" represent the two between Barbara and Ted Olson, although the FBI and DOJ believe that all four represent communications between Barbara Olson and her husband's office (all family members of the Flight 77 passengers and crew were canvassed to see if they had received any phone calls from the hijacked flight, and only Renee May's parents and Ted Olson indicated that they had received such calls).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; and 9:30:56 for 4 minutes, 20 seconds. FBI report, "American Airlines Airphone Usage," Sept. 20, 2001; FBI report of investigation, interview of Theodore Olson, Sept. 11, 2001; FBI report of investigation, interview of Helen Voss, Sept. 14, 2001;AAL response to the Commission's supplemental document request, Jan. 20, 2004."</b>
<br>
<a href="http://www.9-11commission.gov/report/911Report_Notes.htm">http://www.9-11commission.gov/report/911Report_Notes.htm</a>