Bill Maher’s touching tribute to vivacious pundit who died on hijacked 9/11 flight while en route to his show
Barbara Olson was a rising star on American TV when she tragically died on 9/11 in a plane hijacked by terrorists that crashed into the Pentagon.
The pundit had made her last TV appearance on C-SPAN’s The Washington Journal just two days before the tragedy.
She and host Peter Slen were joined by CNN Crossfire’s Bill Press, a former chairman of the California Democratic Party, but Slen started by acknowledging Olson’s success.
The Washingtonian had just named her one of ‘the 100 most powerful women’ in the capital, and a person of particular ‘influence’ in town. Others featured included Laura Bush and Hillary Clinton.
Asked what it ‘meant’ to hold such sway – ‘Is it power? Is it position? Is it money? Is it marriage?’ – the 45-year-old lawyer laughed.
‘I don’t know. I mean, what does it mean to have influence? I don’t know – I get up really early, I go home really late. Does that mean influence? I guess I know people like Bill Press,’ she said with a smile.
The response offered a hint of the candid commentary that made Olson a household name over the course of just three years, not to mention a regular on ‘Larry King Live’ and Bill Maher’s ‘Politically Incorrect.’
Before that, Olson served as a chief investigative counsel for the US House of Representatives and worked for a local law firm known for its work with lobbyists.
Tragically, the vivacious attorney had been on her way to appear on Bill Maher’s show when the plane she was on was hijacked by the terrorists.
Barbara Olson made her last TV appearance on C-SPAN’s morning call in program The Washington Journal on September 9, 2001. She died two days later during the 9/11 terror attacks
The Washington lawyer-turned-commentator spoke with host Peter Slen and CNN Crossfire’s Bill Press for an hour. The network shared the clip to X along with the full episode on Wednesday, exactly 25 years later
’25 Years Ago today… Olson was killed on 9/11 when terrorists crashed her plane into Pentagon,’ a caption on C-SPAN’s X post recalled.
American Airlines Flight 77 had been traveling from Washington, DC, to Los Angeles when it was seized about a half hour after takeoff, recordings and accounts compiled by investigators indicated.
In total, five al-Qaeda terrorists and 59 innocent victims died in the crashed plane.
Olson was one of only two people able to make a phone call to loved ones, the 9/11 Commission would later reveal in 2004.
‘To this day, I don’t know how in the world she managed to do it,’ her husband, former George W Bush Solicitor General Theodore Olson, told Fox News of the two calls he received in 2021. He passed away in November 2024 at age 84.
‘We spoke for a minute or two or three or four minutes. She told me that she been herded to the back of the plane. She mentioned that they had used knives and box cutters to hijack the plane,’ he said, according to The Only Plane in the Sky: An Oral History of 9/11, a 2019 book that included nearly firsthand accounts of the events of that day.
At that point, two hijacked planes had already hit the World Trade Center. Her calls came sometime between 9:16 and 9.26am, Olson said.
The plane Olson was in crashed into the Pentagon. She was only 45 and at the height of her professional career
Olson was one of only two people able to make a phone call to loved ones before the plane hit, investigators confirmed
She called her husband, former George W Bush Solicitor General Theodore Olson, twice to tell them hijackers had comandeered the aircraft by brandishing knives and box-cutters before the line cut
‘We then both reassured one another – this plane was still up in the air, the plane was still flying. She was going to come out OK. She said, “I love you.” She sounded very, very calm.’
The calls allowed Olson, then just two months into his Solicitor General stint, to warn others at the FBI and Justice Department that a third plane was under attack.
‘I wanted to find out where the plane was. She reported to me that she could see houses,’ he added, revealing how Olson had told him the hijackers were unaware she had a phone before the line suddenly went dead.
‘After the second phone call, we kept watching television. Not too long later, we could see over the television screen smoking coming from the Pentagon.
‘I knew in my heart that it was her flight.’
The Olsons, at the time, were a Washington power couple. ‘Barbara’s was the first face that went up on television screens to the American people because people knew who Barbara was,’ Ted told Fox.
He also, heartbreakingly, revealed his wife had initially planned to fly out on September 10, 2001.
However, she stayed in DC an extra day to celebrate Olson’s birthday, which was on September 11.
The couple had enjoyed a dinner celebration the night before, he said.
Bill Maher revealed the following week that Olson had been flying to appear on his show, Politically Incorrect. Showrunners kept a chair empty in her honor
She had become a fixture on the late-night political program over the course of just three years
‘We are in tribute to her, and we cherish her memory. And when she was on our show, we always loved having her,’ Maher said at the time. She was also a regular on Larry King Live
On ABC’s Politically Incorrect, Bill Maher’s producers kept one of the talk show’s four guest chairs empty in honor of her for the entire next week.
A visibly unsettled Maher returned to the air on September 17 and acknowledged the commentator was ‘supposed to be a guest of ours,’ before her memory was met with applause.
‘We are in tribute to her, and we cherish her memory. And when she was on our show, we always loved having her.’
C-SPAN, on Wednesday, shared the entire Washington Journal episode with Olson and Press to its website.
Olson graduated from Cardozo Law School and also worked as a prosecutor in the US attorney’s office in Washington. She married Ted in 1996. The two lived together in Great Falls, Virginia.
