Barbara Olson, American Patriot
By Ann Coulter
FrontPageMagazine.com | September 12, 2001
THE HIJACKERS pushed the passengers to the back of the plane out of
Dulles Airport, Barbara Olson managed to make two final calls on her
cell phone. She called her husband, Ted, the Solicitor General of the
United States. She told him to call the FBI, her plane was being
hijacked.
Moments later, evidently while still on the line with her husband, the
plane plunged into the Pentagon. Barbara must have had to place the call
furtively, and it can’t have been easy to make the call, because of
the terrorists as well as the terror. It was a courageous act.
The Washington Post has run an odd report claiming the hijackers ordered
passengers with cell phones to call their loved ones to say they were
about to die.Maybe that’s true.
The facts are still coming out about large chunks of this story.But I
can’t help being suspicious. That story doesn’t really hang
together.
If 64 passengers knew they had just been recruited for a suicide
mission, it’s hard to figure how the hijackers could have held them
off with box-cutters.It’s also hard to imagine hijackers intent on
plunging into the Pentagon bothering with the courtesy of farewell phone
calls. And if they all were about to die anyway, it’s not clear why
Barbara Olson would have asked Ted for advice about what she should tell
the pilot to do – something that has been authoritatively reported.
We haven’t heard of other cell calls, though nearly everyone has a
cell phone these days.
She knew who to call and what to say despite what must have been
blinding terror.
She was in death as she was in life: The James Bond woman. Barbara was
beautiful enough to be a dumb blonde, but she had the steely
determination, wit and charm of someone who would not be able to get by
on her looks.
Barbara wrote the New York Times bestseller, “Hell to Pay,” about
Hillary Clinton, the molecular opposite of a James Bond girl.She smiled
and laughed at her debate opponents while sweetly shredding them to
bits. And she never compromised, not her integrity, not the facts, not
the law.
Barbara risked having her neck slit to warn the country of a terrorist
attack. She was a patriot to the very end. I can’t believe I’ll
never be able to tell her that. |