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It's been a while since I thought about it, so I'm not sure I have all the details down anymore. I was on some website, maybe this one, shortly after 9-11 and someone was saying Olson had lied about getting a phone call from Barbara before the crash. I thought the person was crazy, so I started digging up the facts to prove them wrong. I got Olson's quotes, realized what the other person was saying, and started investigating. I even emailed the airline that was hijacked, and without asking why, asked if it was possible to activate the seat back phones without a credit card for a collect call. The person who responded said it was impossible, and I had the idea that they understood why I was asking.
From memory, what Olson said was that Barbara had called him twice, collect, from a seat back phone. She couldn't use her cell phone because it was in her purse which was at her seat (presumably she called from a different seat). She called the central switchboard at the State Department and somehow got them to accept the collect call, and patch her through to his line. The first time they were cut off, so she called back and got through again, and told him what the hijackers were doing (mostly just general stuff, like they had forced them to the back of the plane), and he told her what was happening, and they basically said their goodbyes.
There are a few problems. First, he had a direct line at his office, so they didn't have to go through the switchboard, but by claiming she went throught the switchboard he made it harder to check that she had called him. Second, the switchboard would not have accepted a collect call once, much less twice. Third, you can't make any call from a seat back phone without a credit card because you have to swipe the credit card to even activate the phone (I checked the specific model phone to be sure), and even if you called collect, the phone would still charge your credit card the same amount as if you called direct, since the phone charged by the minute no matter how the call was placed. So there was no need to call collect, and no way to call collect unless you had a credit card, which would have been in the purse with the cell phone she couldn't reach.
Now, it's still possible. She could have called the switchboard instead of his direct line, even if that makes no sense. She could have persuaded the switchboard to take the charge by telling them why she was calling and finding someone willing to break rules. I have no idea how common that is. She could have had her credit card in her pocket for some reason, and she could have decided to try to save money by calling collect (she may not have realized she was doomed), not realizing she'd be double billed. It's all possible. It's just not plausible to me.
And there's another thing. I read the transcript of the interview and heard how he told the story, and it sounded (or read) to me like a lie. He starts off saying she called him, then he sort of shifts and says she called him collect, then he seems to think of something else and mention that she called the switchboard, maybe afraid someone might check phone records otherwise, then he says something like "she couldn't get to her cell phone, because I guess it was in her purse back at the seat." It just read like he was making it up as he went along, plugging gaps as he realized someone might question them. And then he did later interviews and the story seemed different, like he'd heard criticisms and was trying to squelch them. And at that time I'd read a lot about Olson as the attorney in Bush v Gore in the Florida courts, and about him with the Arkansas Project, and had just come to see a pattern in the way he constructs his lies, and the story fell into that exact pattern.
Any of it could have been confirmed by credit card receipts and phone records, obviously, and for all I know it was confirmed by some agency who had no obligation to report their findings. But I doubt anyone in the media really wanted to call the Solicitor General a liar over a phone call with his dead wife when it was a minor human interest story with no larger implications. So as far as I know, despite suspicions, no one really followed up on the story.
And I don't think there was a nefarious reason for it, I think Olson is just the type of person who lies to get attention.
Anyway, that's my summary. As I said, it's just a belief, I can't prove it, and it's been a while since I had the exact details and the sources in my thoughts.
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