This can't be true

No, I do not believe the allegation under discussion here. But if you have (as Sherlock might have put it) a weakness for the outre, you'll want the details.

Remember Barbara Olson, the right-wing propagandist (and wife of solicitor general Ted Olson) who was aboard American Airlines Flight 77 when it slammed into the Pentagon? According to Tom Flocco (yeah, yeah, I know), Babs is still alive. In fact, she was arrested on the Polish-German border, after being found in the possession of fake currency.

Due to the ongoing sensitive nature of the arrest, investigation and questioning, one source who declined to be named for this story, told TomFlocco.com that Olson's call to her husband was a fraud and that another projectile impacted the Pentagon other than Olson's plane.

The agents were said to have closed in to arrest the former television pundit because the evidence of counterfeiting and passport violations was obvious and that the timing was right.

According to the agents, Barbara Olson is reportedly considered to be a conspirator to the obstruction of justice in the mass murders of 3,000 individuals on September 11, 2001 in the attacks on the World Trade Center, the Pentagon and the alleged crash in southwestern Pennsylvania.

You can safely file this yarn alongside that old tabloid tale that JFK lived into the '90s on a Greek island.

For some reason, Europeans just love the missile-hit-the Pentagon fable, which may be the silliest conspiracy tale to emerge from 9/11. The current story obviously derives from the older hallucination.

Apparently, we are meant to believe that the real Flight 77 landed secretly, undetected by radar, at some secure location. Moreover, we are meant to believe that not just Olson, but an entire planeload of passengers -- not to mention the pilots and flight attendants -- agreed to pretend to be dead, despite the heartache such a ruse would surely bring to their family members. We are meant to believe that the Evil Gummint Conspirators felt certain that these "victims" would keep mum about the plot for the rest of their lives.

Or perhaps they were killed to insure their silence? Well, jeez. If you're going to kill so many people, why not just load 'em into a jet plane and crash it into the Pentagon?

This much-beloved myth postulates a conspiracy without purpose. Just what propaganda objective is achieved by A) making a jet and passengers "disappear" and B) using a missile to fake up a jet ploughing into the Pentagon?

Put yourself in the position of the conspirator-in-chief. Why not just have the plane itself do the work for you? Easy-peasy, as that guy on the Food Network likes to say.

Even so, the Olson story may turn out to contain a kernel of truth. The kind of woman who possesses fake currency may also possess fake identification. "Barbara Olson" is a common enough name; she may not have realized the implications.

You may recall that Babs -- like El Cid riding into post-mortem battle -- did manage to publish, after 9/11, one last volume of ClintonHate. The cadaver of L. Ron Hubbard has pulled off that literary trick so many times that we no longer find it impressive.

You may also recall the similar rumors surrounding Larry MacDonald, the raving right-wing lunatic congressman who went down on KAL 007 in the '80s. Reactionaries still believe that godless commies conspired to "get" MacDonald. Conversely, a few lefties patched together a theory that MacDonald never really boarded the flight, which he (allegedly) knew was doomed. He faked his death because Larry Flynt had come into possession of photos of MacDonald doing the extra-marital nasty.

I still recall those photos, which Flynt eventually published. Some sights are so horrifying they remain seared in your memory forever.