While the Olsen thread slugfest continues... a question.

[JackRiddler]

Okay, so Griffin is wrong to claim the FBI said that Barbara Olsen made no calls from Flight 77 (other than the one that didn't connect and is listed at 0 seconds).

Since the FBI listing of the Flight 77 passenger calls in the Moussaoui trial documents contains four calls to or from "Unknown Number," one or more of these might have been from Barbara Olsen. Thus the FBI has made no categorical statement.

But now I have a question:

How is it calls that did connect, and for which exact times and durations are given, are listed by the FBI as "Unknown Number"? Note that the presentation doesn't say the information is "classified" or "private." It says it's unknown.

Now if the calls were made, it must have been from a number - the plane's onboard airfone system, for example - and it must have been to a number somewhere. So what part is unknown? The calling number, the receiving number, or both?

The identity of a caller might not be certain, but how could both calling number and recipient number be unknown? And if both numbers are unknown, then how does the FBI know these calls were made? Is there any type of record that would record the time and duration of a call without knowledge of either number?

Was this explained at some point in the presentation of the evidence at the trial?

Can anyone offer an explanation? Thanks.

[Andre II]

1. I second that

Let's insert a bit of logic here:
Olson's first call has been identified. So why not her second and third one?
It shouldn't change anything if she changed her seat. See the identification of the callers as happened in UA 93.
In fact any airphone should have been easily identified!
So was it a cellphone? (which of course reaises serious questions due to the duration of the two calls andalso in view of what Ted Olson said about the calls).
But of course also every normal cellphone can be identfied.
So already the impossibility to identify the caller is hard to understand. Especially given the fact that on AA 77 there have been more non-identified calls than identified calls (omplete contradiction to all other flights).
But they also didn't manage to identify the person being called!
And now how can this be possible given the fact that it was known that Ted Olson claimed to have been called. So even if Ted Olson has a secret number it shouldn't have been too complicated for the FBI to ask him his number....
And why do I know that people are only too happy to point out that Griffin wasn't 100% correct as there still might be a theoretical chance that indeed the calls didn't happen but will anybody try and explain the question in the OP?

[Rosa Luxemburg]

5. obvious reason that Barbara Olsen wasn't on flight 77

[JackRiddler]

2. Anyone?

[William Seger]

3. If Olson made airphone calls through an operator...

... perhaps the airphone records from the flight only show the calls as going to the operator.

The airphone records were part of the Moussaoui trial evidence, but the assertion that Olson received calls was part of the stipulation in the trial -- i.e. the defense didn't question those facts, so there was no requirement to prove them. As far as I can tell from Googling for the transcripts, the reading of that part of the stipulation was the only mention of those specific calls during the trial.

http://cryptome.org/usa-v-zm-030706-02.htm

[JackRiddler]

4. Okay, so why doesn't it say calls to operator?

If that's what these were. And the origin would be known. At least, it would be known that it was airfone to operator. Other details of it would therefore presumably be withheld, not "unknown."

It's an interesting stipulation, don't you think?

From p. 329ff.:

MR. RASKIN: Your Honor, I would like to read from the
6 stipulation again.
7 THE COURT: Yes, sir.

(...)

At 9:12 a.m., flight attendant Renee May called her
10 parents on an air phone. Ms. May told her mother that her flight
11 had been hijacked by six men who had moved them to the rear of the
12 plane. Ms. May asked her mother to call American Airlines to make
13 sure they knew about the hijacking, giving her three Northern
14 Virginia phone calls -- phone numbers to call.
15 Between 9:12 a.m. and the time Flight 77 was crashed
16 into the Pentagon, Renee May's mother called American Airlines at
17 Reagan National Airport and conveyed the message from Ms. May that
18 Flight 77 had been hijacked.
19 At 9:15 a.m. and at 9:26 a.m., Flight 77 passenger
20 Barbara Olson called her husband, Ted Olson, and spoke to him for
21 about one minute before the call was cut off. Barbara Olson
22 reported that the flight had been hijacked by hijackers wielding
23 knives and box cutters and that all the passengers were in the
24 back of the plane.
25 At 9:20 a.m. and 9:31 a.m., Barbara Olson again called

331
1 and spoke to her husband, Ted Olson. She reported that the pilot
2 had announced that the flight had been hijacked. Ted Olson asked
3 Barbara her location, and she replied that the plane was flying
4 over houses. Ted Olson told his wife of the two previous
5 hijackings and crashes.

FBI Presentation -
Times of "unknown number" calls
1) 9:14:57 ("on button pressed," presumably 0 sec.)
2) 9:15:34 (102 sec.)
3) 9:20:15 (274 sec.)
4) 9:25:48 (159 sec.)
5) 9:30:56 (260 sec.)

In-Court reading of "Stipulation" -
Times of Olson Calls, listed in confused order
1) 9:15 a.m.
2) 9:26 a.m. (first two lumped as "about one minute")
3) 9:20 a.m.
4) 9:30 a.m.

So the four "stipulation" calls from Olson match the four connected calls from/to "unknown number" according to the FBI presentation (2-5) for start times, albeit with a lack of clarity as to duration in the stipulation.

The question remains: Since they're in the stipulation, why does the FBI consider these "unknown," giving rise to the confusion? Where did the stipulation info come from, if not the FBI?

Also weird, but can be chalked up to confusion:

She reported that the pilot
2 had announced that the flight had been hijacked.

The pilot?

Meanwhile the Renee May call in the stipulation matches the one identified by the FBI presentation as from her. She mentions six hijackers, but this can be confusion, too.

NOTE: Thanks for linking to that, by the way. And I need to finally learn how to spell Olson.

[jberryhill]

7. It would depend on whose records one was transcribing for the exhibit

As Seger points out above, if you have from the phone company, a record of an operator assisted call, and if you have, from somewhere else, a record of who received the call, then its an editorial question as to whether you put raw data into an exhibit, or additional data based upon other aspects of the investigation.

What the underlying record itself literally says on its face is not something that anyone in the forum is going to know.

But what we do know is that Griffin has a curious standard for what constitutes positive assertion of a negative proposition.

Is someone else claiming to have received those calls?

The pilot?

Yes, "the pilot" would be the person flying the plane at any moment. However, whether that person is the one employed by the airline to do so, or the one with their hand on the PA microphone at any moment is something that you wouldn't see from the passenger compartment.

I know that if I was facing the last few minutes of my life, I'd be embarrassed as hell to be called on the mistaken assumption that a PA announcement about the flight was or was not coming from the actual person with the yoke in their hand.

[JackRiddler]

9. Yes, what Griffin said is wrong and unfortunate.

Now please take that justified critique to the thread about him.

You say it's "an editorial question as to whether you put raw data into an exhibit, or additional data based upon other aspects of the investigation." While true enough, what was put into the exhibit as the identification of the call source and recipient - "unknown number" - is not the raw data, but a conclusion or synthesis therefrom. It happens to be confusing, and it appears to be untrue (since source - airplane - and at least the initial recipient - operator, for example - must be known for it to even be known that there was a call at that time with that duration).

[noise]

10. A simple but unwelcome explanation

I know it's hard to believe but one explanation is that the FBI altered their findings for political reasons.

One would also think that accusing the Solicitor General of lying about a conversation with his wife would not be something new FBI Director Mueller wanted to deal with.

Some may call me an unpatriotic conspiracy nut but I don't see a reason to trust the FBI on this.

[JackRiddler]

12. Yes, obviously that hangs in the air...

well, it does for anyone whose reasonable, neutral position is that government statements are lies until proven otherwise. ;) Mr. Olson did his credibility no favors when he argued before the SC for the government's right and duty to lie to the people.

But more seriously, the FBI's "editorial choice" of how to present data that is fully consistent with the stipulation's account of the Olson calls at best leaves such a suspicion open, but only in the most passive way, entirely subject to interpretation, with no active casting of suspicion; the "unknown number" cannot be spun into what Griffin claims, or any brand of certainty that this is what the FBI is doing.

It is worth a FOIA request, as M. Laurier says below.

[Flatulo]

14. Barbara Olson was an attractive woman, but Ted was a toad.

What if she made a final call to a lover and the record was washed for the sake of propriety...?

[JackRiddler]

16. Lot of what-ifs we can construct...

Maybe the most relevant point is that Ted is a professional liar. That's not a what-if.

Not just an ideologue, like his late spouse. Ted was being paid by the government he had helped place in office in the course of a stolen election to tell lies for it in court and, later, to doctrinally justify the practice of lying as a need of the state. Same Ted's statements on the calls from Barbara (first to be reported on 9/11) set up the official story of Setptember 11.

It's not the FBI's job to maintain propriety. If per your scenario any of the "unknown number" calls weren't the ones attributed to Barbara in the stipulation read in court, then a cover-up was conducted and the stipulation was - perjurous, no? (I'll let our resident lawyers let us know if lying in the stipulation constitutes perjury even if it's by consensus of both sides.)

[JackRiddler]

20. Correction:

Read "attributed as from Barbara to Ted Olson in the stipulation..."

[RedSock]

13. the pilot?

If I recall, part of what Barbara says to Ted during one of the calls is "What should I tell the pilot?"

I think the idea here is that the cockpit was taken over, the passengers and crew put in the back of plane, and when they are all back there, the pilot tells them the plane has been hijacked -- as opposed to making an announcement on the loudspeaker!

[Andre II]

11. Hard to believe

Todd Beamer on UA 93 called the operator. In his case this is clearly stated in the phone call animation.
Your theory doesn't explain why the airphone itself wasn't identified; As JackRiddler has correctly pointed out: both the phone that was used for the call and the phone that was call has been indentified only as "unknown".
How can an airphone aboard AA 77 be unknown?

[jberryhill]

17. Since I don't know anything about how airphone calls were accounted...

...billed, etc., then I have no idea whether a UA airphone call made over OH or PA to one area code or exchange would generate the same paper trail as an AA airphone call over DC to another area code or exchange.

So, I guess, with your detailed knowledge of how these systems worked in 2002, you'll have to provide an answer to the assumption behind your own question that the calls in two different places on two different airlines would generate identical records (and in circumstances where one set of calls is direct-dialed and paid-for and another set of calls is operator assisted).

I have no clue why the records would be different, but I also have no reason to believe they would be the same. You seem to believe they would generate identical records, so perhaps you might explain, based on how the system worked, why they would be.

I would, however, be willing to believe that there are all sorts of telephone numbers in (202) that show up in odd ways on accounting and billing records, and for definite reasons.

[Laurier]

6. 1) Would it kill you to make an effort to spell the names of the deceased correctly?

2) FOIA is your friend.

What's stopping you?

[JackRiddler]

8. Not at all, you are right.

I apologized for that in Post 4 above, and will apologize again if you like.

[Bolo Boffin]

15. I don't understand why anyone thinks these calls are a lie.

If someone denies the planes and/or the hijackers, that's one thing. As far out as that is, questioning the Olson calls would be reasonable on those premises.

But if you think Barbara Olson was aboard that plane, then why wouldn't she call her husband, the Solicitor General of the United States? I find it more incredible that she would not try to call Ted.

Given that, and given the fact that the FBI interviewed all family members, eliminating them all from the prospective recipients of those calls, and given that Renee May was also eliminated from who those calls could be...

...and given that Ted did indeed report two calls from Barbara, why with all of this evidence would anybody question whether or not Ted Olson got those calls?

Here's a suggestion: as Flatulo has speculated, perhaps she called the operator to call the SG office collect. Such a request was way outside the normal parameters of what an operator would suspect, so she would have to persuade the operator to do as she said. She wouldn't have gotten the same operator any of the times, so each time would be a new challenge to persuade. She would have to have kept her voice low and her manner unobtrusive. And at the slightest hint of being discovered, she would have to have hung up. Is there any reason to speculate further than the given circumstances for why there were four calls and why only two got through to Ted Olson?

[jberryhill]

19. And then there's the question of how to pay for the call....

http://www.youtube.com/v/DUAK7t3Lf8s&rel=1

If the Coca-Cola Company found out....

[leftofthedial]

18. in call detail records at least one number must be known