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Banned
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Originally Posted by AVoiceOfReason
I never thought the person needed to be a judge, but at least the candidate needs to have some experience in actual trials involving constitutional issues. I could serve as a judge in criminal trials (and in fact, DO at the traffic court/misdemeanor level now and then) because of my experience. I'd be woefully out of my league if I were asked to decide tax law questions. Of the names bandied about on MSNBC this morning, Ted Olsen was mentioned, and he'd be someone not currently a judge that I'd say was qualified to handle constitutional issues.
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Oslon does seem to be "everywhere". His account of 9/11 highjackers using "boxcutters" is the original and sole source of this myth, now ingrained in the 9/11 attack narrative. Olson performed in a shakey, shady, manner in his senate hearing before he was confirmed as solicitor general of the U.S.
I would only welcome his SCOTUS nomination because he would be put under oath again and there would be another opportunity to reveal him as the ultra partisan puppet of the likes of Richard Mellon Scaife, that his history already shows him to be. You chose the TFP id "AVoiceOfReason". Olson is not a reasonable choice for appointment to any public office, IMO. His integrity is compromised and his commitment to the truth is suspect.
It was reported in June and in July that Time Inc. had changed it's legal team to the lawfirm whose partners Theodore Olson and Miguel Estrada took the lead in the unsuccessful attempt to appeal the subpoena from special prosecutor Fitzgerald for reporter Matt Cooper's records and sources in the Plame "outing". Olson provided the legal advice to Time chief editor Norman Pearlstine, who ultimately decided to turn over Cooper's records to Fitzgerald.
Olson seems to be "everywhere"....for a long, long, time now. In 2002, arguing before the U.S. Supreme Court in his capacity as Solicitor General of the U.S., Olson had this to say:
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http://www.guardian.co.uk/internatio...671089,00.html
Widow blames US officials for Guatemala dirty war death
Duncan Campbell in Los Angeles
Thursday March 21, 2002
The Guardian
.........The US knew at the time of her husband's kidnapping who had carried it out but, Ms Harbury says, it chose to tell her that it had no information.
The government's lawyers argue that the case should not proceed, on the grounds that government officials are entitled to give misleading information.
"There are lots of different situations when the government has legitimate reasons to give out false information," the solicitor general, Theodore Olson, told the supreme court this week. .............
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I find Olson's history to be, at the least, a fascinating and ever growing collection of coincidences.....he is always involved in the biggest national political stories.
Did you know that just 12 hours after the 9/11 attacks, his "account" of phone calls received by him from his wife, Barbara Olson, reportedly a passenger on the doomed Flight 77, reported to have crashed into the Pentagon, are the sole source of the widely reported (and believed) scenario of "hijackers armed with box cutters"? Olson was did not testify to the 9/11 commission; rather, FBI records of a 9-11-01 "interview" with him, were entered into the 9/11 commission report, as part of the report "findings" The 9/11 commission claimed that it was not able to retrieve billing records of the calls that Barbara Olson made to her husband at the Justice Dept. Olson is reported to have said that his wife "called collect" from a seatback phone on the airliner, and he is also reported, months later to have said that she made several calls to him before Flt 77 crashed, "from her cellphone".
Olson argued successfully before the Supreme Court in Dec., 2001, in "Bush v. Gore", that allowing the Florida vote recount would do "irreparable harm" to his client, candidate GW Bush....
Olson has represented Reagan in Iran Contra, is good friends with Ken Starr, was best man in 1998 of R. Emmett Tyrrell Jr., the Spectator's combative editor, the man at the center of the "Arkansas Project", which was the primary catalyst behind the "Whitewater" investigation of the Clintons, and the legal suit on behalf of Paula Jones.
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http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp...¬Found=true
The Two Theodore Olsons
Although Conservatives Love Him, Some Doubt Solicitor General Nominee's Candor
By Robert G. Kaiser and Thomas B. Edsall
Washington Post Staff Writers
Thursday, May 17, 2001; Page A01
...........Olson has done legal work for Ronald Reagan, Monica Lewinsky and Jonathan Pollard, an American who spied for Israel. He has argued 15 cases before the Supreme Court, and won several historic ones, most notably last year's Bush v. Gore..............
...............He has been not only an architect of the conservative legal movement but a significant political player as well, advising Paula Jones's legal team when she sued President Bill Clinton for sexual harassment, and defending his friend Kenneth W. Starr during the Whitewater investigation...............
...............Olson's nomination was held up at the Judiciary Committee last week, after Democrats expressed concern that the nominee was less than candid in testimony about his role with the American Spectator magazine and its "Arkansas Project," a $2.3 million effort to report on Bill and Hillary Clinton that was funded by Richard Mellon Scaife, a conservative philanthropist..................
................Fifteen years ago, Justice Department lawyers found "significant evidence" that Olson had given carefully worded testimony to Congress that "was knowingly false." An independent counsel cleared him of criminal wrongdoing in that episode...............
................ Olson and his wife, Barbara, have made no secret of their political predilections. Barbara Olson worked for House Republicans investigating Clinton, became a prominent anti-Clinton television commentator and wrote a gleefully hostile bestseller about Hillary Clinton, "Hell to Pay."
Olson himself wrote a long article for American Spectator denouncing Janet Reno's Justice Department as politically corrupt, and co-authored an article for the magazine enumerating, with sarcasm, the federal and Arkansas laws the Clintons might have violated. When R. Emmett Tyrrell Jr., the Spectator's combative editor, got married in 1998, Olson was his best man. ...............
................. Olson entered the public arena in the early months of Reagan's presidency, when he provided the legal reasoning for Reagan's decision to fire the nation's air traffic controllers, an unexpected, forceful display of leadership that set the tone of the new administration. At the time Olson was assistant attorney general for the office of legal counsel, the branch of the Justice Department sometimes described as the president's law firm.
Olson came to that position as a 40-year-old protégé of William French Smith, with whom he had worked in the Los Angeles law firm of Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher. Smith, Reagan's first attorney general, brought two bright young lawyers to Washington in 1981: Olson and Starr, who served as counselor to the attorney general.
Twenty years later, Olson was at the center of one of the great political dramas of American history, arguing twice before the Supreme Court late last year on behalf of the Bush campaign. His success before the court impressed legal colleagues -- "If you were giving out . . . prizes, Olson would win one," said Lloyd Cutler, the prominent Washington lawyer and former counsel to presidents Jimmy Carter and Clinton. His victory in Bush v. Gore made Olson a hero among Republicans, and a natural candidate to be President Bush's solicitor general.................
......................... Lincoln Caplan of Yale Law School, a liberal and author of a book on solicitors general, "The Tenth Justice," said he was surprised that senators have not questioned Olson about the conclusion of the independent counsel who investigated him in the 1980s that he had given "disingenuous and misleading" testimony to Congress in a contentious hearing involving the Environmental Protection Agency. The independent counsel, Alexia Morrison, decided not to prosecute Olson, saying his "less than forthcoming" testimony was "literally true," and not provably a violation of law.
Caplan described this conclusion as "significant for a solicitor general candidate" because "integrity is essential to the office," and Morrison's conclusions were "not an exoneration [but] quite a damning conclusion."
Olson was criticized by others in that same episode. Lawyers in the Justice Department's public integrity section who investigated his testimony used strong language to characterize their conclusions: "The available evidence strongly suggests that Olson's testimony is false"; "We think it is probable that Olson's testimony, literally and in context, was false"; "Olson tailored a narrow response calculated to be literally true yet still evade the committee's purpose"; "there is significant evidence that Olson's testimony in this area was knowingly false." ....................
................... Describing herself as a strong supporter of Bush, Burford said she nevertheless had strong negative feelings about Olson. "He out-and-out lied to me," she said.
Republicans on the House Energy and Commerce Committee joined in the criticism of Olson in that episode, concluding that "regrettably, the president was ill-advised by Assistant Attorney General Olson" on the law of executive privilege.
The core of the Democrats' claim that Olson was misleading in his confirmation testimony centers on his involvement with the Spectator, which hired him as a lawyer in 1994 and put him on the board two years later.
When asked about his involvement in the Arkansas Project on April 5, Olson replied: "It has been alleged that I was somehow involved in that so-called project. I was not involved in the project in its origin or its management."
Later, in what Democrats consider to be a more problematic assertion, Olson wrote to the committee that his legal work for the Spectator "was not for the purpose of conducting or assisting in the conduct of investigations of the Clintons."
Olson's partner, Cox, has said that Olson's legal work included the assessment of the Clintons' potential legal exposure. An article that Olson acknowledged he has co-authored on that subject ran in the American Spectator's February 1994 issue.
Olson has repeatedly denied that he knew anything about Scaife's funding of the project until 1997, when a controversy arose inside the Spectator over whether the project's money was being spent appropriately. Arkansas Project accounting records show payments to Olson's law firm totaling $14,341.45 during 1994 alone, but Olson and Tyrrell, the Spectator's editor-in-chief, have both said there was no way Olson's law firm could have known what account the Spectator was drawing on to pay the firm.
David Brock, a former investigative reporter for the Spectator, has described Olson participating directly in discussions of Arkansas Project stories. Tyrrell countered that Brock was not a part of the project and "the record on that is indisputable." Yesterday, Brock produced Arkansas Project expense records showing at least 19 payments to him for travel costs, books and periodicals and phone calls.
One potential source of information that might clarify Olson's relationship with the Arkansas Project is the report written by Michael Shaheen in 1999, based on his investigation into whether lawyers working for Starr gave improper assistance to anti-Clinton witness David Hale, perhaps using money from the Arkansas Project. Shaheen, a former Justice Department official, concluded that there was no wrongdoing by Starr's staff. In the course of his inquiry, he interviewed many Arkansas Project participants, mostly before a special grand jury. More than one of them refused to testify, invoking the constitutional right not to incriminate oneself.
Because the Shaheen report is based on grand jury testimony, it is covered by federal rules requiring that it be kept secret. Democrats on the Senate committee have expressed interest in seeing it in hopes it contains information about Olson. A Democratic aide was shown a heavily redacted portion of the report, sources said.
According to knowledgeable sources, Cox, on Olson's behalf, has asked Robert W. Ray, Starr's successor as independent counsel, whether he could certify that the Shaheen report contains no information linking Olson to the Arkansas Project beyond Olson's own testimony that he learned about the project -- but not who funded it before 1997 -- from his service on the American Spectator foundation's board. Ray decided that it would not be proper to respond to Cox's request, the sources said.
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http://www.law.com/jsp/article.jsp?id=1119344732543
Reporters Plead Their Case to Supreme Court
Scribes from The New York Times, Time magazine hope justices take up their cause
Bethany Broida
Legal Times
06-22-2005
........Miller is represented by First Amendment expert Floyd Abrams while Cooper and Time turned to former Solicitor General Theodore Olson and his Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher partner Miguel Estrada. In addition, attorneys general from 34 states and the District submitted an amicus brief asking the Court to clarify the law. .........
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http://www.americanpolitics.com/20010523TedOlson.html
In 1988, when President Reagan left office, Theodore Olson became his personal attorney and represented him in matters relating to the Iran Contra scandal. Olson monitored Reagan's testimony throughout the investigations and hearings, a central and indispensable figure during the examination of the extra-Constitutional power grab effected by conservative Republicans.
Shortly after President Clinton took office in 1993, a loose cabal of conservative Republicans plotted to drive him from office. The same Theodore Olson, and his wife Barbara, were at the core of the effort, which nearly succeeded in deposing a popular, duly elected president against the expressed will of the American people.
In 2000, Theodore Olson represented George W. Bush as conservative Republicans seized the presidency by forcing Florida to cease the counting of lawful votes through the machinations of the conservative Republican majority of the U.S. Supreme Court. Olson, again, was central to the effort -- a successful coup d'état.
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http://slate.msn.com/id/1007659/
chatterbox Gossip, speculation, and scuttlebutt about politics.
Whopper of the Week: Ted Olson
Timothy Noah
Posted Friday, May 11, 2001, at 12:15 PM PT
"Only as a member of the board of directors of the American Spectator. It has been alleged that I was somehow involved in that so-called project; I was not involved in the project, in its origin or its management."
--Solicitor-general nominee Theodore Olson, testifying before the Senate Judiciary committee, in response to the question, "Were you involved with the so-called Arkansas Project at any time?" The Arkansas Project was the American Spectator's $2 million scandal investigation of Bill and Hillary Clinton funded by conservative philanthropist Richard Mellon Scaife. Olson's remarks were quoted on May 3 by Jake Tapper in Salon, and on May 10 by Thomas B. Edsall in the Washington Post. Tapper was following up on earlier Salon stories by Joe Conason and Alicia Montgomery.
Continue Article
"[David] Brock, who was one of the Spectator's leading investigative reporters in the Arkansas Project but who left the magazine after a series of disagreements, said Olson attended a number of dinner meetings at the home of R. Emmett Tyrrell Jr., president and chairman of the Spectator, which were explicitly 'brainstorming' sessions about the Arkansas Project.
"'There were several dinners at Bob Tyrrell's house, editorial planning sessions, on articles on the Clintons in Arkansas,' Brock said. 'Ted [Olson] was sometimes there, occasionally Barbara Olson [Ted Olson's wife] as well.'
"Olson, according to Brock, was an active participant in discussions of possible stories, of methods to investigate scandal allegations and of ways to cultivate sources who would be familiar with the Clintons' political and financial dealings."
--Edsall's May 10...........
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http://www.democraticunderground.com...3/5415.html#18
Ashcroft stops flying commercial and is on a plane owned by the FAA on that particular day.
It is Ted's birthday so his wife celebrates it with him the night before and has a birthday breakfast with him before leaving him alone on his birthday to go do something that is more important to her. She is not planning to be back that night.
She gets on a plane on the same day on which several Pentagon generals have abruptly cancelled flights.
Ted and Barbara are supposedly popular in conservative circles and they knew NOTHING!!??!!
She often calls him during the day on the "batphone" but today, on the hijacked plane, she apparently does not use that number, preferring to involve as many people as possible.
CNN and Fox news are alerted almost immediately about unusual choice of weapons carried by the hijackers.
He comes home that night and and finds a love note she left on his pillow.
No evacuation to a safe house for Ted, or his guests that night who included Clarence Thomas. Terrorists apparently do not attack at night.
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http://www.nypress.com/17/30/news&columns/AlanCabal.cfm
NEWS & COLUMNS
Miracles and Wonders
By Alan Cabal
MIRACLES AND WONDERS Last week, USA Today reported a joint effort between Qualcomm and American Airlines' to allow passengers to make cellphone calls from aircraft in flight. According to the story, the satellite-based system employs a "Pico cell" to act as a small cellular tower.
"It worked great," gushed Monte Ford, American Airline's chief information officer. "I called the office. I called my wife. I called a friend in Paris. They all heard me great, and I could hear them loud and clear."
Before this new "Pico cell," it was nigh on impossible to make a call from a passenger aircraft in flight. Connection is impossible at altitudes over 8000 feet or speeds in excess of 230 mph.
Yet despite this, passengers Todd Beamer, Mark Bingham, Jeremy Glick and Edward Felt all managed to place calls from Flight 93 on the morning of September 11. Peter Hanson, en route to Disneyland with his wife and daughter, phoned his dad from Flight 175. Madeline Amy Sweeney, a flight attendant, made a very dramatic call from Flight 11 as it sped to the North Tower. Barbara Olson made two calls, collect, to her husband at his government office from Flight 77 as it made its way to the Pentagon.............
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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. <a href="http://archives.cnn.com/2001/US/09/11/pentagon.olson/index.html">http://archives.cnn.com/2001/US/09/11/pentagon.olson/index.html</a>
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The little white lie was about Barbara Olson, a conservative commentator for CNN and wife of US Solicitor General Ted Olson. Now deceased, Mrs Olson is alleged to have twice called her husband from an American Airlines Flight 77 seat-telephone, before the aircraft slammed into the Pentagon. This unsubstantiated claim, reported by CNN remarkably quickly at 2.06 am EDT [0606 GMT] on September 12, was the solitary foundation on which the spurious “Hijacker” story was built.
Without the “eminent” Barbara Olson and her alleged emotional telephone calls, there would never be any proof that humans played a role in the hijack and destruction of the four aircraft that day. Lookalike claims surfaced several days later on September 16 about passenger Todd Beamer and others, but it is critically important to remember here that the Barbara Olson story was the only one on September 11 and. 12. It was beyond question the artificial “seed” that started the media snowball rolling down the hill. <a href="http://homepage.ntlworld.com/steveseymour/lies911/lies.htm">http://homepage.ntlworld.com/steveseymour/lies911/lies.htm</a>
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http://globalecho.org/view_article.php?aid=2434
Barbara Olson's call from Flight 77 never happened
The contortions of all involved not to leave a paper trail in the form of phone bills proves it.
by: rowland morgan on: 2nd Dec, 04
........The Olson phone call story is a central load-bearing beam in the whole 9/11 official construction. It was crucial in establishing the existence of marauders on a civilian flight and their possession of dangerous weapons. Later, the identity of the plane that hit the Pentagon hinged on it, too. This vital, founding element of the narrative originated in the Department of Justice and was carried by CNN, part of $38 billion-a-year AOL-Time-Warner (as it was then). It was issued on 12th September at 2:06 AM Eastern Daylight Time---just 16 hours after Olson�s bereavement. It went as follows:
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. Shortly afterwards Flight 77 crashed into the Pentagon (sic)� 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.
This was the first eye-witness account of hijackers to reach the public. A TV celebrity had seen them, and filed the story with CNN by means of her second husband making an unsubstantiated verbal report. They were men brandishing knives and cardboard cutters who herded passengers to the rear of the plane. No hint of their appearance or origin, but living, breathing hijackers. The story at no point quotes Ted Olson directly and nor does it say by what method his lawyer wife telephoned. All subsequent mass-media reports of the Olson call were derived from this original, freely citing it as a mobile phone call.
It is the only ostensible passenger story coming from all the rogue aircraft that establishes the use of �cardboard cutters� or box-cutters, the permitted weapons that would get American Airlines off the hook and not implicate the FAA---and it emanates from the Department of Justice (seat of the FBI), issuing at 2:00 AM next morning. It makes that inscrutable reference to Mrs Olson feeling that �nobody was in charge�. And she is supposed to have asked her husband �to tell the pilot what to do�, as if Capt. Burlingame were not lying on the cockpit floor with his throat cut, but had allowed himself to be �herded� to the back of the plane with everyone else and could still make a move. Perhaps the man at the controls had thrown up his hands, bewildered that the controls no longer worked. Burlingame was a decorated war veteran and long-time Pentagon liaison officer. What advice could Ted Olson possibly offer him? What did his wife think Ted Olson might know about a hijacking? That is, if she ever called at all.
The Kean Commission, perhaps aware of the swell of scepticism around it, addresses the question of this notorious call, introducing a new evasion. Apparently all calls from Flight 11 were all made to an unknown number! Their footnote states:
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, although the FBI and DOJ (dept. of justice) 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 [flight attendant] 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 9:30:34 for 4 minutes, 20 seconds. FBI report, �American Airlines Telephone 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.
(Kean Commission report Note 57.)
So, we are left with a situation that is hazy, perplexing and confusing.
1 Hazy, because the Commission does not come out and say the calls were made on Flight 77�s fitted airphones, and if they were there is a selection of calls, all of them �to unknown number�---so that there can be no billing record. Nor are the providers of the in-flight phone service cited, only the airline.
2 Perplexing, because the Commission says that flight attendant Renee May called her parents on a mobile phone at about 9:15, when Flight 77 was lost. But we are not convinced that successful mobile phone connections can be made from an airliner at cruising altitude. 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? Also, Flight 77 at 9:15 was supposed to be over the Alleghenies, an under-populated area only sparsely served by mobile networks. The only evidence the Commission seems to have for this call is an FBI file. Renee May�s authenticated Verizon bill would be more convincing, and easily enough obtained and reproduced in the report.
3 Confusing, because the Commission seems to be relying for the Olson call on an FBI investigation of, and interview with, Ted Olson that was conducted on the day of the call, when America was believed to be under attack.
The FBI interviewed Helen Voss, who was Ted Olson�s P.A., on September 14th, three days before Tony Mauro of American Lawyer Media, published an account of the call that supposedly arrived in the middle of total chaos at the Department of Justice:
It was just as the World Trade Center attacks were unfolding that someone in the solicitor general's office took a phone call from Barbara Olson. Ted Olson's longtime assistant, Helen Voss, raced into the SG's (solicitor-general�s) office to tell him that Barbara was on the line, sounding panicked. He picked up the phone and exclaimed, �What, you've been hijacked?� She was calling on her cell phone from aboard the jet, which had just left Dulles Airport. Voss says, �My heart sank.� The call ended abruptly, but then Barbara called again, reportedly asking her husband, �What should I tell the pilot?� It was a comment that friends have taken as a sign that she was characteristically trying to find a solution to the crisis. The pilot, along with passengers, had apparently been herded into the back of the plane.
Olson reported the conversation to the Justice Department's command center. After the second call ended, Olson and Voss turned on a television set in his office, unsure what else could be done.
(Emphasis added)
This contemporary story, probably gathered from the DOJ press office and a phone-call to Voss, fails to name the person who took the original call and does not imply that Helen Voss handled the call, except to say that Olson�s third wife �sounded panicked�, which the �someone� who took the call might plausibly have told her, to make her hurry. So Helen Voss is in the clear, and an unidentified person took the call (although we learn later that Olson�s office is �tight-knit�). No witness there, anyway. The account also differs on key points from the official story. Mrs Olson �called on her cell phone from aboard the jet�. So, what of American�s phone records? And what of Olson�s garbled account six months later, when he told the Daily Telegraph that Mrs Olson had wasted a lot of time trying to call collect because she had no credit card to use on the Airfone? The only obvious explanation for this confusion would be if Mr Olson were striving to evade the telephone records that might exist for a normal call, either cellphone or Airfone. But since he is the USA�s chief law officer in the Supreme Court, this is obviously unthinkable. Instead, we hear three years later, all calls from Flight 77 (that were not mobile calls) went to �unknown number�.
The American Lawyer Media story says the third Mrs Olson called back, whereas according to Olson�s later account, she struggled to get through the first time. Nor does this story refer to any lengthy call lasting until just microseconds before the crash, as the American Airlines data implies. It seems Olson had time to report the call to the Dept. of Justice command centre. (But that would leave a call record, so there is another divergence, since the Kean report said he tried to call his boss, John Ashcroft, but was �unsuccessful�. So, no call record there, either.) Olson 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 until microseconds before it crashed into the Pentagon? American Airlines� records make no sense, and anyway, why don�t they come from the telecoms company that supplied the airphones?
American Lawyer Media says that among those who gathered at Olson�s house later to commiserate with the widower were CNN correspondent Tim O'Brien and his wife, Petie, who were longtime friends. �There was no choice. You just go, even though there is nothing you can really say. Your presence is what counts,� said O'Brien. Did O�Brien plant the phone-call story with CNN?
The report was real enough, and its effect was enormous, but the contortions officialdom went through to avoid a phone-call record seem to prove that the Olson telephone call never happened. In his Daily Telegraph interview six months later, (apparently unpublished in the USA), Olson claimed his wife reversed the charges on a call to his office at the department of Justice, using an in-flight satellite phone located on the back of a seat at the rear of the jetliner. Her mobile was in her handbag stowed away, and she did not have her credit card available, Olson said. So his wife, (who was �panicky�, remember) reversed the charges, which understandably caused a big hold-up at Justice�s switchboard. However, a credit card was at the time required for any outgoing call on such a phone, so we presume she is supposed to have borrowed one and reversed the charges to save the cardholder the $10 per minute call charges. Under the circumstances, such a concern seems absurd, and with the big delay, why was no one else demanding to make a call on her phone? Or even using another in-flight phone to make a call to a loved one? Yet all other passengers are silent. The Kean Report says that Olson�s phone-call to Ashcroft was �unsuccessful�. Ashcroft, like his President, was visiting a primary school at the time, apparently beyond the limits for an urgent call from his number two back at the Department. So that�s another untraceable call, leaving no records.
Ted Olson could give his adherents closure, and shut his critics up, by simply producing the Department of Justice�s telephone accounts, showing a couple of hefty reverse-charges entries charged from Flight 77�s Airfone number at around about 9:20 AM on 11th September, 2001. It is probably impossible, because American Airlines Boeing 757s do not appear to be equipped with in-flight satellite phones at all. Perhaps in error, perhaps not, American�s official website currently states:
Inflight Satellite Phones
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.
Link: https://www.aa.com/content/travelInf...chnology.jhtml
Furthermore, if there were in-flight phones on board this particular 757, why would half-crazed �box-cutter wielding� hijackers on a suicide mission possibly allow them to be used---particularly by only one of the 56 passengers and six crew?
If Mrs Olson instead used her mobile phone to call her husband, as numerous mass media reports assumed from the single, very brief, very early, very unsubstantiated CNN report, possibly to call twice, then why did no passenger on the aircraft call---just the once?
Everything in the 9/11 narrative traces back to this one report from Ted Olson, and his investigation, interview by the FBI on the very same day, a day when America thought it was being invaded and at least 13,500 were believed to have perished. In the small hours of the night after the attacks, CNN launched the legend of the terrorist hijackers threatening innocent Americans with blades and driving them out of their paid-for seats to cower in the back of the plane. The corporate networks megaphoned it world-wide. Barbara Olson�s tragic glamour and TV cred gave it extra pep. Even if he did throw his grief aside that night, he had to evade or expedite the restrictive provisions of the National Security Agency. If he did leak the call to CNN�s Tim O�Brien in the midst of his grief that day, Ted Olson�s word is already compromised out of his own mouth. Addressing the Supreme Court of the United States of America while defending the government in a widow�s suit to sue CIA death-squad leaders, the US Solicitor General said: �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.�........
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10-27-2005, 05:07 AM
