Did Flight 77 really crash into the Pentagon?

intro • official claim • timeline • undamaged lawn • generator oddity • building damage • inside damage • suspicious debris • crash videos
 alleged hijackers • unusual passengers • pentagon fatalities • conflicting witnesses • debunking sites • theories • performance report • links

The unusual passengers on Flight 77...

Were the Flight 77 passengers selected?

"Flight 77..was unusually light on passengers this day." -Washington Post

If there was a conspiracy with Flight 77, doesn't a lot of the following passengers fit the type of people you would expect to have been involved in it? 

Summary of Flight 77 passengers:

• Total passengers:  64
• Passengers involved in gov’t/defense related work:  21
• Senior staff/directors/managers:  18
• Military backgrounds:  10
• Navy background:  7
• Executives/chief officers/presidents:  5
• Men:  30
• Women:  24
• Kids:  5
• Non-hijacker passengers:  59
• Alleged Hijackers*:  5

*Allegedly armed with only knifes and box cutters.

Is it just coincidence that most of the passengers on Flight 77 with military backgrounds were Navy and that the crash at the Pentagon happened in the Navy's command center which took the heaviest casualties?

"By the time Flight 77 reached the C corridor, the airliner and 64 passengers and crew were a moving ball of fire.
The impact destroyed a lot of offices and 189 lives, 125 inside the building. The Army's personnel management shop took a direct hit. So did the Navy's command center, where casualties were the heaviest. The center is a large open facility with lots of cubicles." -Washington Times (12/26/03)

Why didn't the passengers of Flight 77 rise up against the alleged hijackers like we are told the passengers on Flight 93 did since they both knew the hijackers were going to kill them?

"Herded to the back of the plane by hijackers armed with knives and box-cutters, the passengers and crew members of American Airlines Flight 77 -- including the wife of Solicitor General Theodore Olson -- were ordered to call relatives to say they were about to die." -Washington Post (09/12/01)

Is it really believable that all but one of the 64 passengers on Flight 77 were recovered at the Pentagon when almost nothing of a plane was?

Naming the Dead — Confronting the Realities of Rapid Identification of Degraded Skeletal Remains

"Nuclear DNA testing (along with dental records and fingerprints) of the remains from the victims aboard American Airline (AA) Flight 77 and within the Pentagon was useful for identifying 178 of the 183 victims. Five missing individuals (four within the Pentagon and one aboard the airplane) could not be identified due to lack of biological material from the crash. Five remaining nuclear STR profiles were obtained from the crash site that did not match any references for the victims. These profiles were thought to represent the terrorists aboard the flight. The 40 victims aboard the United Airline (UA) Flight 93 that crashed near Shanksville, PA, were also identified by nuclear DNA testing, dental records, and fingerprinting. Four nonmatching nuclear DNA profiles were also obtained from the crash site and again tentatively ascribed to the terrorists.
The DNA results strengthened the hypothesis that two of the terrorists were brothers, as indicated by other evidence. Two of the terrorist STR profiles aboard the AA Flight 77 gave a sibling index greater than 500." -NIST (01/04)

(See also:  Inside damage; Hijackers; FBI crime scene; Flight 93; 63 versus 11)

How were so many passenger remains found outside the C ring, but no evidence of any blood or body parts are seen?

If some of the passengers where involved with this conspiracy, could they still be alive and living under new identities?  Where some of these passengers specifically selected to be on this flight as a way to eliminate them for "knowing to much"?

The Flight Crew of Flight 77

1.  Charles F. Burlingame III, 51, of Herndon, Virginia, was the Captain of Flight 77, an aeronautical engineer, and a former Navy fighter pilot.

A graduate of the Naval Academy and the Navy's Top Gun fighter pilot school in Miramar, Calif., Mr. Burlingame accepted a position 12 years ago with American Airlines, where his wife, Shari, is a flight attendant.

At Dulles Airport, Capt. Charles Burlingame, who had been a Navy F-4 pilot and once worked on anti-terrorism strategies in the Pentagon, was steering his 757, American Airlines Flight 77, down the runway for the long flight to Los Angeles.

Like many military pilots, Burlingame considered the most difficult job to be landing an F-4 fighter jet on the deck of an aircraft carrier as it pitched at sea in the dark of night. After he left the Navy, Burlingame was hired by American Airlines in 1989.

Navy Vice Adm. Timothy Keating said Burlingame, who trained many pilots, "could make the jets talk. He could fly."

Friends and family remembered him as a man who was unabashedly patriotic, who embraced military life even after he retired from active and reserve duty. He remained active in the reserve, working until 1996 as a liaison in the Pentagon (where he had worked for most of his 17 years as a Naval Reserve officer).  When his plane went down Tuesday, it ripped through a section of the building that includes the Navy Reserve offices.

Mark Burlingame said his brother was in the Navy Reserve and had worked in the same area of the Pentagon where the airliner crashed.

He planned to celebrate his 52nd birthday by attending a California Angels baseball game in Anaheim last Wednesday. When he learned he couldn't get a good seat for the game, he told his wife, Sheri, not to join him aboard the ill-fated flight.

Burlingame's father, Charles F. Burlingame Jr. (75), joined the Navy at the age of 17 and had a 23-year military career in the Navy and Air Force. His mother, Patricia A. Burlingame, who died 10 months before her son, was a nurse and medical technician, according to their obituaries.

"One of the true ironies of this crash is that it was into the Pentagon, where he worked for many years as a naval reserve officer," said Burlingame's brother, Brad, a tourism executive in West Hollywood, California. "The people that perished in that crash could very well have been friends and colleagues of his."

Debra Burlingame, sister of Charles Burlingame, "The fact is, it wasn't our government who killed my brother and 3,000 people," she said. It was 19 hijackers and their sponsors.   Burlingame was one of those who protested Bush's reluctance to appoint the Sept. 11 commission in the first place. She joined a vigil outside the White House, carrying a big sign that said, "My Brother's Murderers Were Listed in the San Diego Phone Book" -- as one of the hijackers was.

"We wanted to assure people that if there was any chance of saving that plane, this was the kind of guy who would have been able to do that," she said. "This was a guy that's been through SERE (Survival Evasion Resistance Escape) school in the Navy and had very tough psychological and physical preparation."
They spread the word about Burlingame's experience as a fighter pilot for eight years, and a reserve officer who worked for the assistant secretary of defense during the Persian Gulf war.

What evidence is there that Capt. Burlingame "fought off the terrorists" and died before the crash as some of his friends and family believe?

Why did the government deny Capt. Burlingame his own burial plot at Arlington National Cemetery when they gave another Flight 77 passenger full burial honors even though they were they were both under 60yrs of age at the time of their deaths?

Burial by the Book; Flight 77 Pilot Denied Own Grave at Arlington - Washington Post (12/04/01) [Reprinted]

Family of September 11 Pilot Angry at Burial Plan - Arlington Cemetery (12/05/06)

Army, pilot's family disagree on Arlington burial - CNN (12/06/01)

Pilot of hijacked plane to get full Arlington burial

"Army officials relented on Friday and offered a separate Arlington National Cemetery burial for Charles Frank Burlingame III, pilot of the hijacked jet that crashed into the Pentagon.
Burlingame, 51, of Herndon, Va., was initially denied his own grave at Arlington because he died before 60, the eligibility age for reservists." - USA Today (12/07/01)

------------------------

Charles Droz III, 52 - "He was given a full military burial at Arlington National Cemetery."

2.  David Charlebois, 39, of Washington, D.C., was the First Officer of Flight 77.

David Charlebois, the co-pilot of American Airlines Flight 77, which crashed into the Pentagon, was openly Gay, the Washington Blade reported. Charlebois was a member of the National Gay Pilots Association. Charlebois is survived by Tom Hay, his partner of almost 13 years.

Charlebois’s father’s work as a U.S. foreign service officer landed Charlebois in Paris during his early childhood years, Hay said, apparently converting Charlebois into a life-long Francophile. Charlebois, who spoke French fluently, traveled to Paris at least once a year, Hay said.

After working as a corporate pilot, he began his career as a commercial pilot, first with US Air and then, for ten years, with American Airlines.

He is survived by his parents, Roland and Vivienne Charlebois of Arlington, VA brother of Donald of Keene, VA sister, Denise Burger of Front Royal, VA, many nieces and a nephew.

Doesn't it seem odd that a person like Capt. Burlingame would be flying with a openly gay co-pilot?

3.  Michele M. Heidenberger, 57, of Chevy Chase, Maryland, was a flight attendant for 30 years.

Family members said she was trained five years ago in how to deal with a hijacking. "Knowing Michelle, she was probably the one who would have approached them first and said you can't go into the cockpit," said sister-in-law Betsy Heidenberger.  She is survived by her husband, Tom, a pilot for U.S. Airways, their 11-year-old son and college-age daughter.

4.  Jennifer Lewis, 38, of Culpeper, Virginia, was a flight attendant for 17 years.
5.  Kenneth Lewis, 49, of Culpeper, Virginia, was a flight attendant for 15 years.

Friends thought flight attendants Jennifer and Kenneth Lewis were such a good match that they collectively referred to them as "Kennifer." Though the husband and wife team from Culpepper, Va. often worked separate flights, they were together on American Airlines Flight 77, planning to vacation when they reached Los Angeles.  They were introduced by another flight attendant at a party.

6.  Renee Ann May, 39, of Baltimore, Maryland, was a flight attendant and a docent for the Walters Art Museum in Baltimore

She graduated from San Diego State University and had flown with American since 1986. She loved to travel and she loved art. She worked as a docent at the Walters Art Museum in Baltimore, near her home. She especially enjoyed giving museum tours to young visitors. "All children loved to be with her," said her fiancé, David Spivock*. "She was the nicest person I ever met.”
Survivors include her parents and brothers.

On American Airlines Flight 77, which crashed into the Pentagon with 53 passengers and six crew onboard, flight attendant Rene May and passenger Barbara Olson, wife of Solicitor General Ted Olson, made calls.

Renee May, a flight attendant who a source said made a call on a cell phone from the hijacked American Airlines plane that crashed into the Pentagon, left behind a mother in Las Vegas.
The mother, according to the source, received a phone call Tuesday from her daughter after 6 a.m. [EST] Renee May asked her mother to call American Airlines to let them know Flight 77 had been hijacked. Her mother called the airline, the source said.
"She told her mother they were all told to move to the back of the plane," said the source, who declined to share other personal details about the phone call.

At 9:12, Renee May called her mother, Nancy May, in Las Vegas. She said her flight was being hijacked by six individuals who had moved them to the rear of the plane. She asked her mother to alert American Airlines. Nancy May and her husband promptly did so.

*David Spivock sent Killtown a not-so-nice email once.  Notice where his email came from:  "Spivock, David R Mr WRAMC -Wash DC" <D...@US.ARMY.MIL>  WRAMC is the Walter Reed Army Medical Center.

The Passengers of Flight 77

7.  Paul Ambrose, 32, of Washington, D.C., a senior clinical adviser with the Office of the Surgeon General.

Worked with the secretary of Health and Human Services and the surgeon general, addressing racial and ethnic disparities in health.
A doctor who graduated from Marshall University School of Medicine in his hometown of Huntington, W.Va. Ambrose had completed a masters degree in public health at Harvard University 2 years ago. He was more than halfway through a fellow with the Association of Teachers of Preventive Medicine and was working directly with the Surgeon General on a number of health issues. "This guy was spectacular," says longtime friend Erin Fuller. "He could've been surgeon general of this country."

Last year, Ambrose was named the Luther Terry Fellow of the Association of Teachers of Preventative Medicine and worked closely with the Surgeon General's office. He was the point person for multi-agency collaborations addressing issues such as immunizations, healthy lifestyles, medical school curricula, and racial and ethnic disparities in health.
These institutes have become a popular and important training ground for AMSA leaders since Paul's time as Legislative Affairs Director.

"I told people that my best friend was going to be the youngest surgeon general," Dr. Adam Wooten said during a memorial ceremony shortly after Paul Ambrose’s death.
Paul Ambrose was on his way from Washington, D.C., to Los Angeles to attend a conference on obesity on Sept. 11, 2001, when terrorists cut his life short and left his parents with a barrage of questions.

9.  Mary Jane (MJ) Booth, 64, of Falls Church, Va., secretary for American Airline's general manager at Dulles Intl. Airport..

An American Airlines employee for 45 years, she worked for more than 30 years as secretary to American's general manager at Dulles.

10.  Bernard Brown Jr., 11, of Washington, D.C., student at Leckie Elementary School in Washington.

He was embarking on an educational trip to the Channel Islands National Marine Sanctuary near Santa Barbara, California, as part of a program funded by the National Geographic Society.

His father, Bernard Sr., is a Navy chief petty officer who's works at the Pentagon and who's office is in the wing where the crash happened.  Bernard took a rare day off to play golf on 9/11. Had he not — he would have been in his office at the Pentagon when the plane slammed in at 9:43.

Is it just the strangest of strange coincidences that Bernard Jr.'s dad gave a lecture to him about death and dying the morning of his plane trip, took a "rare day off" that day from his office at the Pentagon, and that his son's hijacked flight "crashed" in the very spot that his office was in?

His father, a Navy chief petty officer, says he sat his son down on the morning of Sept. 11, and had a serious talk with him about dangers he might encounter on the trip.
“To be honest — totally honest — we talked about death,” he says. “And I just told him, ‘Don’t be afraid.’ Just because the events that they were going to do were pretty dangerous. Just listen to what the people tell you, and the instructions, you’ll be all right. You’ll be fine. He said ‘Daddy, I’m scared,’ and I said, ‘hey, don’t be scared, don’t be afraid to die. Because we all are going to die someday.’”
Bernard’s mom Sinata Brown went to work. Her husband Bernard took a rare day off to play golf. Had he not — he would have been in his office at the Pentagon when the plane slammed in at 9:43.
Sanita wasn’t really worried about her son either. After all, his flight had taken off an hour and a half earlier.
Tragically, his own son’s memorial is not the only one Bernard Brown expects to attend.
That’s because Flight 77 — the flight carrying Bernard Brown’s son — actually crashed into the wing of the Pentagon where he works. Few of his colleagues survived.
“One of my best friends, a guy who worked for me, a girl who was a training officer,” says Bernard. “Everybody on that, you know, people that worked in my area, everybody, all the Navy personnel probably except for two or three I knew on that list. So, out of 30 something, how many that were in there, I knew every last one of them.” - MSN (09/25/01)

11.  Suzanne Calley, 42, of San Martin, CA, worked in the Strategic Alliances group at Cisco Systems Inc.

Cisco also lost a valued family member that day. Suzanne Calley, who worked in the Strategic Alliances group at Cisco, was flying home aboard American Airlines Flight 77.

12.  William E. Caswell, 54, Silver Spring, MD, physicist,  was a senior scientist for the U.S. Navy, retired Army.

A third-generation physicist whose work at the Navy was so classified that his family knew very little about what he did each day.
They don't even know exactly why he was headed to Los Angeles on the doomed American Airlines Flight 77.
"It was a trip he often took," his mother, Jean Caswell, said Friday. "We never knew what he was doing there because he couldn't say. You just learn not to ask questions."

In 1983, Bill's career took an abrupt turn when he moved to the Naval Surface Weapons Center in Silver Spring, Maryland, to work on applying artificial intelligence and nonlinear dynamics to signal processing problems. In 1985, he was invited by the navy to work as a civilian scientist on a major classified defense technology project.

After being drafted into the Army during the Vietnam War, he resumed his studies at Princeton University, where he received a Ph.D. in physics in 1975, specializing in elementary particle theory.

Survived by his wife  Jean, her son from a previous marriage, Sean O'Connor, and his 17-year-old daughter, Jennifer, a senior at a Silver Spring, Md., magnet high school.

13.  Sara Clark, 65, of Columbia, MD, a sixth-grade teacher at Backus Middle School in Washington, D.C.

She was embarking on an educational trip to the Channel Islands National Marine Sanctuary near Santa Barbara, California, as part of a program funded by the National Geographic Society.

14.  Asia Cottom, 11, of Washington, D.C., a student at Backus Middle School in Washington, D.C.

She was embarking on an educational trip to the Channel Islands National Marine Sanctuary near Santa Barbara, California, as part of a program funded by the National Geographic Society.

Her mother Michelle was at her office in the Department of Agriculture, just across the Potomac river from the Pentagon.

15.  James Daniel Debeuneure, 58, of Upper Marlboro, MD, a fifth-grade teacher at Ketcham Elementary School in Washington, D.C.

He earned a B.S. in psychology and education at Johnson C. Smith University, and during his career worked for the Charlotte Mecklenburg Board of Education, Celanese Corp., C&P Telephone, and the Army Times.

He was embarking on an educational trip to the Channel Islands National Marine Sanctuary near Santa Barbara, California, as part of a program funded by the National Geographic Society.

16.  Rodney Dickens, 11, of Washington, D.C., a student at Ketcham Elementary School.

He was embarking on an educational trip to the Channel Islands National Marine Sanctuary near Santa Barbara, California, as part of a program funded by the National Geographic Society.

17.  Eddie Dillard, 54, of Alexandria, VA, a retired Marketing Manager with Philip-Morris.

His first job was with Southland Corp. in Dallas. He later opened his own 7-Eleven store in East Palo Alto, Ca., and then went to work for Phillip Morris, where he retired in 1997 as a district manager after 19 years of service.
In retirement he began a new career in real estate, buying and selling property throughout the U.S. He loved history, reading newspapers, and playing dominoes and bid whist.

Survivors include his wife Rosemary; son Edrick; two brothers and a sister.

Rosemary Dillard, 56, of Alexandria, Va., wore a small heart-shaped pin dedicated to the victims of American Airlines Flight 77, the plane that hit the Pentagon. Dillard's husband, Eddie, 54, was on the flight. Rosemary, now retired from that airline, was the manager of the jet's flight crew.

Rosemary Dillard knew the flight attendants onboard American Airlines Flight 77. She was their supervisor.

ROSEMARY DILLARD was sitting in a managers meeting at Reagan Washington National Airport when she heard screams coming from a frequent-fliers lounge.
The American Airlines flight-crew manager raced into the Admiral's Club to investigate and saw newscasts showing a jetliner strike the south tower of the World Trade Center.
By the time Dillard reached her office, employees there were aghast: Another jet had slammed into the Pentagon--just 31/2 miles away.
"One person said it was Flight 77--one of our crew," Dillard recalled. "I said, 'It can't be 77. I just put Eddie on that plane.'"
Nearly two years later, images of Sept. 11, 2001, are still vivid in Dillard's memory. Tears immediately flow as she recalls the morning she lost her husband of 15 years and the four flight attendants she'd gotten to know since relocating from Seattle seven months earlier to manage American's crews out of the three Washington-area airports.

Ms. Dillard...had acted as the American Airlines base manager at Reagan National Airport on the morning of Sept. 11. She had been responsible for three D.C.-area airports, including Dulles. For the last two and a half years, she has been haunted by the fact that American Airlines Flight 77 took off from Dulles Airport that morning, with her blessing.
Her husband was a passenger on that flight.
She hoped, in hearing tapes of conversations between flight crews and authorities on the ground, to find out why, when flight controllers in Boston suspected a hijacking of American Airlines Flight 11 as early as 8:13 a.m., neither her company nor the Federal Aviation Administration notified her to warn the crew of American Airlines Flight 77 of the terrorist threat in the skies when the plane took off at 8:20 a.m. By 8:24 a.m., flight controllers were certain that Flight 11 had been overrun.
"Flight 77 should never have taken off," Ms. Dillard said through clenched teeth.
"You would have thought American’s S.O.C. would have grounded everything," says Ms. Dillard. "They were in the lead spot, they’re in Texas—they had control over the whole system. They could have stopped it. Everybody should have been grounded."
Ms. Dillard had to learn about the two planes crashing into the World Trade Center from the screams of waiting passengers in the next-door Admirals Club who were watching TV. "We all rushed back to our offices to wait for ‘go-do’s’ from headquarters," she recalls. But headquarters personnel never contacted Ms. Dillard, the Washington base manager, to inform her that Flight 77 was in trouble. They had lost radio contact with the plane out of Dulles at 8:50 a.m. More than 45 minutes later, her assistant gave Ms. Dillard an even more devastating piece of news.
"There’s a plane that hit the Pentagon. Our crew was on it."
"Was that 77?" Ms. Dillard asked.
"I think so," her assistant said.
"Are you sure it was 77?" Ms. Dillard pressed. "’Cause I just took Eddie over to Dulles," Ms. Dillard said numbly, referring to her husband. "Eddie’s on that plane."
She looked at the crew list. Her heart sank. "I knew one of the ladies very well," she later remembered, "and she had kids, and the other two who were married, and another one was pregnant. It was horrible."
One of American’s top corporate executives directly in the line of authority that day was Jane Allen, then vice president of in-flight services, in charge of the company’s 24,000 flight attendants and management and operations at 22 bases. She was Ms. Dillard’s top boss. But Ms. Dillard never heard from her until after Flight 77 had plowed into the Pentagon. Reached at United Airlines corporate headquarters in Chicago, where Ms. Allen now works, she was asked to confirm the names of participants in the Sept. 11 phone call and why the decision was made to hold back that information.
"I really don’t know what I could possibly add to all the hurt," she said.
"I really am not interested in helping or participating," Ms. Allen said, putting down the phone.
"This has been the attitude all the way along," Ms. Dillard observed. "Everybody was keeping it hush-hush."
"I’d been with American for 29 years," Ms. Dillard said with embittered pride. "My job was supervision over all the flight attendants who flew out of National, Baltimore or Dulles. In the summer of 2001, we had absolutely no warnings about any threats of hijackings or terrorism, from the airline or from the F.A.A." - New York Observer (06/17/04)

18.  Charles Droz III, 52, of Springfield, VA, vice president of software development for EM Solutions Inc. and retired Lieutenant Commander, Navy.

Charles was vice president of software development for EM Solutions, a professional services firm in Arlington, Virginia, that specializes in information technology, systems engineering and enterprise management software solutions. Droz was on American Airlines Flight 77 on a business trip to Los Angeles when the plane crashed into the Pentagon.

Prior to joining EMSolutions, Mr. Droz spent 20 years in the U.S. Navy, where he developed high capacity signal processors, multi-processor application software and innovative signal processing algorithms. He engaged in system engineering consulting, development of geographically distributed, web-based systems, and development of an ARPA project demonstrating rapid object-oriented application development through frameworks, components, and application templates.

Why wasn't there any problems reported with Charles Droz being buried at Arlington as there was with Capt. Burlingame?

A native of Sewickley, Pennsylvania, Droz was a movie buff who enjoyed playing the stock market. He held a bachelor of science degree in chemical engineering from Grove City College in Pennsylvania and a master's degree in chemical engineering from the Naval Postgraduate School. He was given a full military burial at Arlington National Cemetery.

Droz is survived by his wife, Cindy; a daughter, Shannon, a senior at the University of Virginia, and by his mother and sister.

19.  Barbara Edwards, 58, of Las Vegas, Nevada, taught French and German for five years at Palo Verde High School in Las Vegas.

Born in Germany and a Clark County School District language instructor, Edwards also taught German last spring at CCSN.

Born in Frankfurt, Germany, she came to the U.S. when she was a child. She grew up in Michigan and lived in various parts of the country. "My mom never let little things get us down," said one of her sons, Capt. Scott Edwards, 28, a Marine pilot in Beaufort, S.C. "Even if something went wrong, it was never the focus."

Edwards was traveling with Bud and Dee Flagg, of Corona, Calif.

20.  Charles S. Falkenberg, 45, of University Park, Maryland, was the director of research at ECOlogic Corp., a software engineering firm.
21.  Zoe Falkenberg, 8, of University Park, Maryland, was the daughter of Charles Falkenberg and Leslie Whittingham.
22.  Dana Falkenberg, 3, of University Park, Maryland, was the daughter of Charles Falkenberg and Leslie Whittingham.

Charles was a software engineer for ECOlogic. He helped develop software to evaluate the effects of the 1989 Exxon Valdez oil spill and was working on a project for NASA.

For Leslie A. Whittington, Charles Falkenberg and their two young daughters, the flight to Los Angeles was to have been only the start of their journey. They were headed to Australia, where Whittington, a Georgetown University economist, was to work as a visiting professor for several months at Australian National University.  The family, friends said, had been planning for this adventure for months. The pair had been married 17 years.

The five victims whose remains have not been identified include:  Dana Falkenberg, a passenger on Flight 77.

Especially honored in the service were the families of five of the dead who did not receive remains. They were: 3-year-old Dana Falkenberg, a passenger aboard Flight 77.

During an interview earlier this week, Koch delicately handled eerie mementos of the crash found during cleanup: Whittington's battered driver's license. One granddaughters' luggage tag.

29.  Bryan Jack, 48, of Alexandria, VA, was a senior executive at the Defense Department.

Bryan, a budget analyst/director of the programming and fiscal economics division with the Defense Department who worked at the Pentagon, was headed to California to give a lecture at the Naval Postgraduate School when American Airlines Flight 77 slammed into the Pentagon. Colleagues say Jack was a brilliant mathematician. As head of programming and fiscal economics in the Office of the Secretary of Defense, he was a top budget analyst.  He had worked at the Pentagon 23 years.

Had Bryan Jack gone to his Pentagon office and settled at his computer at 8 a.m. Tuesday as he normally did, he might be alive today.

But in a cruel twist of fate, Jack was headed to California to give a lecture at the Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey. He was aboard American Airlines Flight 77 when it slammed into the Pentagon at 9:40 a.m.

Jack had married artist Barbara Rachko last June.  Rachko has a commercial pilot's license and spent 7 years as a naval officer. She resigned from active duty but is a commander in the Naval Reserve. They have no children.

"There are things you can't explain," he [father] says. "It's ironic that this is the way it happened, but it's the way it happened."

39.  Barbara Olson, 45, Great Falls, VA, an author, legal analyst and former federal prosecutor and congressional lawyer, a conservative commentator who often appeared on CNN, and was married to U.S. Solicitor General Theodore Olson.

She twice called her husband as the plane was being hijacked and described some details, including that the attackers were armed with knives. She had planned to take a different flight, but she changed it at the last minute so that she could be with her husband on his birthday. She worked as an investigator for the House Government Reform Committee in the mid-1990s and later worked on the staff of Senate Minority Whip Don Nickles.

Former federal prosecutor Barbara Olson served as the Chief Investigative Counsel to the U.S. House of Representatives' Committee on Government Reform and Oversight, where she spearheaded the investigation of the Clinton administration's travel office firings and eventually uncovered the explosive "filegate" scandal. She also served as the Principal Assistant General Counsel and Solicitor to the House.

She graduated from Cardozo Law School in New York and became a prosecutor in the U.S. attorney’s office in Washington. As chief investigative counsel for the House Government Reform and Oversight Committee, she investigated the White House travel office firings. She also was the author of two books. She had recently joined the law firm Balch & Bingham.

She and her husband often invited congressional staffers and Supreme Court justices to their home. After the 2000 election, he argued the Florida election case before the U.S. Supreme Court while she advised the team representing President George W. Bush on the legalities of the absentee ballot count.

Barbara was both passionate and courageous. She held strong opinions, and nobody who was in the same room with her ever had any doubt about what she believed. She did not apologize for what she thought or said, and she always spoke her mind articulately and clearly. Barbara Olson was a champion of freedom. And she was a champion of the rule of law--of the need to maintain a free and civil society by means of a well-defined body of law that protects the individual from government tyranny.

Then the phone rang. It was Barbara calling collect. “My first reaction was, ‘Thank God, you’re OK’,” he recalled.

Associates of her husband said after she and the other passengers were herded into the back of the plane, she pulled out her cell phone and twice called her husband's office at the Justice Department. When she reached her husband, she told him the plane was being hijacked and urged him to quickly call the FBI.

CNN, the network for whom Mrs. Olson worked, reported that she also told her husband that the hijackers were wielding knives and cardboard cutters and that their motives were not readily apparent.

During the second call he [Ted Olson] told her a plane had crashed into the World Trade Center.

On American Airlines Flight 77, which crashed into the Pentagon with 53 passengers and six crew onboard, flight attendant Rene May and passenger Barbara Olson, wife of Solicitor General Ted Olson, made calls.

At some point between 9:16 and 9:26, Barbara Olson called her husband, Ted Olson, the solicitor general of the United States. She reported that the flight had been hijacked, and the hijackers had knives and box cutters. She further indicated that the hijackers were not aware of her phone call, and that they had put all the passengers in the back of the plane.  About a minute into the conversation, the call was cut off. Solicitor General Olson tried unsuccessfully to reach Attorney General John Ashcroft.  Shortly after the first call, Barbara Olson reached her husband again. She reported that the pilot had announced that the flight had been hijacked, and she asked her husband what she should tell the captain to do.  Ted Olson asked for her location and she replied that the aircraft was then flying over houses.
Another passenger told her they were traveling northeast.  The Solicitor General then informed his wife of the two previous hijackings and crashes. She did not display signs of panic and did not indicate any awareness of an impending crash. At that point, the second call was cut off.

She twice called her husband as the plane was being hijacked and described some details, including that the attackers were using knife-like instruments.

Ted Olson received two calls on this office telephone from his wife as her hijacked airplane headed toward the Pentagon.  Theodore B. Olson, 42nd Solicitor General (not on plane).  (Click photo for bio.)

He successfully represented George W. Bush at the Supreme Court last December, stopping the Florida recounts and guaranteeing Bush the White House.

He has said that officials have the right to lie to American citizens, telling the US Supreme Court that misleading statements are sometimes needed to protect foreign policy interests.

Books by Barbara Olson:

The Final Days: The Last, Desperate Abuses of Power by the Clinton White House

"In The Final Days she shows how the Clintons climaxed eight years of sleaze with a spree of payoffs and self-indulgence unprecedented in its vulgarity and possible illegality."

Hell to Pay: The Unfolding Story of Hillary Rodham Clinton

"Hillary, it seems, long ago accepted Bill Clinton as someone who could advance her goals, as a necessary complement to her intellectual cold-blooded pursuit of power."

If Ted Olson, the US Solicitor General and husband of Barbara Olson, admits that the US Government gives out false information to American citizens, how can we be sure that the US Government is not giving out any false information relating to the Pentagon crash, or that Mr. Olson is lying about receiving those alleged two collect phone calls from his wife aboard Flight 77?

Lying to the public is all right, says Washington's chief lawyer
"The United States Government's top lawyer has said that officials have the right to lie to American citizens, telling the US Supreme Court that misleading statements are sometimes needed to protect foreign policy interests.
"It's easy to imagine an infinite number of situations where the government might legitimately give out false information," the Solicitor-General, Theodore Olson, told the court on Monday.
"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."
Since the September 11 attacks, the Bush Administration has made several moves to clamp down on the flow of information. For example, last November the Attorney-General, John Ashcroft, ordered closer reviews of which documents federal agencies release under the Freedom of Information Act.
In a separate effort aimed at confounding terrorists through the use of misinformation, the Administration created - then disbanded - an office within the Pentagon that was to have planted inaccurate stories in foreign media." – Sydney Morning Herald [Reprinted from citizenreviewonline.org]

If Barbara Olson called from her cellphone, why did Ted Olson say she called collect?

‘I Can’t Just Sit Back’
"Then the phone rang. It was Barbara calling collect. “My first reaction was, ‘Thank God, you’re OK’,” he recalled.
WHAT HAPPENED NEXT—how Barbara Olson, the feisty conservative author and TV pundit, informed her husband that her plane too was being hijacked—has become one of the multitude of harrowing stories that surround the events of Sept. 11. As Olson related to NEWSWEEK, Barbara was calm and collected as she told him how hijackers had used boxcutters and knifes to take control of the plane and had herded the passengers and crew to the back. “Ted, what can I do?” she asked him. “What can I tell the pilot?” Then, inexplicably, she got cut off. Olson frantically called Attorney General John Ashcroft’s private line—and got no answer. Olson then called the Justice Department command center: “I want you to know there’s another plane that’s been hijacked,” he told them. “My wife is on it.” Barbara called back—and gave still more information: how the plane was circling around and then appeared to be heading in a northeasterly direction. Finally, the line went dead moments before American Airlines Flight 77 crashed into the Pentagon.
In the weeks since his wife’s death, Olson has sought to channel his grief—and his anger at what the hijackers did—into what he views as a productive purpose: he’s become a leading advocate for the Justice Department’s current push for broader powers to crack down on terrorists. It is a role that has raised some eyebrows. As chief advocates for the U.S. government before the Supreme Court, Solicitors General have long had a tradition of staying above the political fray—and avoiding lobbying Congress on behalf of legislation they might one day have to defend before the Justices.
Last week, Olson—after reviewing the anti-terrorism bill with top Justice officials—accompanied Ashcroft to Capitol Hill when the A.G. testified for the measure. Olson also has defended the proposal on TV talk shows. Among its provisions: easing restrictions on FBI wiretaps, giving the Justice Department new powers to seize assets, and allowing the indefinite detention of suspected terrorists during deportation proceedings. The proposals have drawn criticism from an unlikely coalition of liberal and conservative groups, many of whom fear that Ashcroft and his deputies are using the current crisis to restrict civil liberties. “It’s like they went through their desk drawers and just submitted a prosecutors’ wish list,” charges Grover Norquist of the Americans for Tax Reform. Norquist, who is helping to mobilize conservative opposition to the proposals, insists there is little relationship between some of the Justice proposals and fighting the terrorists who executed the Sept. 11 assault.
But Olson—perhaps the country’s best known conservative legal advocate—says he is baffled at the arguments of the opponents. “I don’t understand the objections,” Olson said. Consider the debate over indefinite detention of illegal aliens the Justice Department is seeking to deport. In the current case, he says, the policy makes sense if the United States has evidence that a deportable alien might have been involved in plotting a terrorism act—such as another hijacking—but lacks the proof needed to bring charges in court. “What are we going to do if we can’t convict them?” he asks, noting that even Supreme Court liberals have agreed that “national security” concerns should be taken into account in such circumstances. Olson also emphasizes that the proposals to loosen restrictions on wiretaps and make it easier for prosecutors to use evidence gathered by foreign governments abroad would only change current U.S. statutes—and would not in any way diminish constitutional protections.
Amid his personal grief, Olson also has made another decision that could raise questions from some quarters. After consulting with his late wife’s closest friends, he has given the greenlight to Regnery, the conservative publishing house, to proceed with plans to publish the manuscript Barbara Olson finished just before her death. Like her first book, “Hell to Pay,” the new tome—entitled “The Final Days: The Last Desperate Abuse of Power by the Clinton White House”—is a fierce attack on Bill and Hillary Clinton.
Although the book is sure to stir controversy, Olson said there was never any question that his wife would have wanted it to come out. “For me to tell Barbara that her voice would be silenced because she was murdered by terrorists—I couldn’t have lived with myself, and Barbara could not have tolerated that,” he said." -MSNBC (12/29/01)

How come Barbara Olson and Renee May were the only two of the 59 non-hijacker passengers on board Flight 77--including many with military experience--that supposedly made phone calls from the plane even after the alleged hijackers reportedly ordered all the passengers to call their loved ones to tell them they were all about to die especially if Barbara Olson called collect?

"There was not even the grace of instant death. Instead, there was time to call from the sky over Virginia, fingers pumping cell phones, terrified passengers talking to loved ones for one final time.
Herded to the back of the plane by hijackers armed with knives and box-cutters, the passengers and crew members of American Airlines Flight 77 -- including the wife of Solicitor General Theodore Olson -- were ordered to call relatives to say they were about to die.
Barbara K. Olson, the former federal prosecutor who became a prominent TV commentator during the impeachment of President Bill Clinton, called her husband twice in the final minutes. Her last words to him were, "What do I tell the pilot to do?"
"She called from the plane while it was being hijacked," Theodore Olson said. "I wish it wasn't so, but it is."
The two conversations each lasted about a minute, said Tim O'Brien, a CNN reporter and friend of the Olsons. In the first call, Barbara Olson told her husband, "Our plane is being hijacked." She described how hijackers forced passengers and the flight's pilot to the rear of the aircraft. She said nothing about the number of hijackers or their nationality.
Olson's first call was cut off, and her husband immediately called the Justice Department's command center, where he was told officials knew nothing about the Flight 77 hijacking.
Moments later, his wife called again. And again, she wanted to know, "What should I tell the pilot?"
"She was composed, as composed as you can be under the circumstances," O'Brien said.
But her second call was cut off, too.
"Incidentally, she wasn't even supposed to be on this flight," O'Brien added on CNN. "She was booked on a flight yesterday, but today is Ted's birthday, so she wanted to be here this morning to have breakfast with him before she left."
Details about who was on Flight 77, when it took off and what happened on board were tightly held by airline, airport and security officials last night. All said that the FBI had asked them not to divulge details.
But some passengers on the flight were identified by friends and family. Flight attendant Michelle Heidenberger had been trained to handle a hijacking. She knew not to let anyone in the cockpit. She knew to tell the hijacker that she didn't have a key and would have to call the pilots.
In the hazy hours that followed the attack, it was unclear which of four hijacked planes ended up where. But witnesses soon identified the aircraft that smashed into the Pentagon as an American flight, and then as Flight 77, which was unusually light on passengers this day." -Washington Post (09/12/01)

Is it unusual that Ted Olsen was able call CNN to report his wife's phone call right after she just died when he should have been very distraught about her death?

"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.
 A short time later the plane crashed into the Pentagon. Barbara Olson is presumed to have died in the crash.
 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.
 She felt nobody was in charge and asked her husband to tell the pilot what to do.
 Barbara Olson was a former federal prosecutor and served as Chief Investigative Counsel to the House Committee on Government Reform and Oversight during its probe into the Clinton Administration "Travelgate" scandal." -CNN (9/12/01)

How was Barbara able to make two phone calls when all the phone lines in the area were jammed?

"When the crash actually occurred at 9:38 a.m., all area communications seemed simultaneously overwhelmed. Firefighters calling the ECC couldn’t get through. Relatives of Pentagon workers found cellular and land lines jammed.

Cellular telephones were virtually useless during the first few hours." -Arlington County After-Action Report