AFTER 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.