The Washington Post

WASHINGTON — There was not even the grace of instant death. Instead, there was time to call from the sky over Virginia to loved ones, fingers pumping cell phones, voices saying quick, final goodbyes.

Herded to the back of the plane by hijackers armed with knives and box-cutters, the 64 passengers and crew 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.

About an hour after takeoff from Dulles International Airport Tuesday, Flight 77, a Boeing 757 headed for Los Angeles, became a massive missile aimed at the White House. The target would change suddenly, but the symbolism was equally devastating.

By 9:45 a.m., when the diving plane carved out a massive chunk of the Pentagon, its passengers had experienced unspeakable terror, untold dozens died and the nation’s greatest symbol of security lay shattered, thick plumes of smoke camouflaging a gaping hole in its heart.

Barbara Olson, the former federal prosecutor who became a prominent TV commentator during the impeachment of President 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 who is acting as family spokesman. 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.

On the ground, air traffic controllers watching Flight 77’s progress westward suddenly lost touch with the plane, which disappeared from radar screens and cut off radio contact.

Someone aboard Flight 77 had flipped off the transponder, the tool that sends a plane’s airline identification, flight number, speed and altitude to controllers’ radar screens.

But soon after losing contact, Dulles controllers spotted an unidentified aircraft speeding directly toward the restricted airspace that surrounds the White House. Federal aviation sources said Dulles controllers noticed the fast-moving craft east-southeast of Washington Reagan National Airport and called controllers there to report that an unauthorized plane was coming their way.

Controllers had time to warn the White House that the jet was aimed directly at the president’s mansion and was traveling at full throttle.

But just as the plane seemed to be on a suicide mission into the White House, the unidentified pilot executed a pivot so tight it reminded observers of a fighter jet. The plane circled 270 degrees to the right to approach the Pentagon from the southwest, whereupon Flight 77 fell below radar level, vanishing from controllers’ screens, the sources said.