Just before the hijacked American Airlines flight 77 crashed into the Pentagon on September 11th, Barbara Olson used her mobile phone to call her husband, Theodore, solicitor general of the United States.
Her description of how passengers and crew were herded to the rear of the plane by terrorists armed only with knives and box cutters gave authorities their first glimpse into the "how" of the multiple hijackings.
She asked for advice on how to proceed and calmly exchanged last words with her husband. It was Theodore Olson's 61st birthday, and his wife was on the flight only because she had stayed an extra day in Washington for a celebratory breakfast with him.
Barbara Olson, who was 45, was a conservative lawyer who became a ubiquitous presence on America's political talk shows during the campaign to impeach President Clinton. Indeed, she and her husband were at the core of Hillary Clinton's "vast right-wing conspiracy", and her best-selling attack on Hillary Clinton, Hell To Pay (1999), described a First Lady "whose lust for power surpasses even that of her husband".
The book also speculated on the Clintons' partnership. It remained on the New York Times best-seller list for more than three months.
Lately, she was a regular on CNN's Crossfire and Larry King programmes, as well as Fox News, CNBC, MSNBC, and the NBC Today programme, where she was paired against the O.J. Simpson lawyer Alan Dershowitz.
She may have belittled Hillary Clinton's lust for power, but the Olsons were one of the growing number of "power couples" who reflected the ever-tightening union of media and government figures within the Washington area. Theodore Olson could argue the case for George W. Bush's election before the Supreme Court, while his wife offered television commentary belittling Al Gore's campaign positions.
Their Virginia home became what Joe Conason called "a right-wing legal salon \ brought together some of the most implacable enemies of the Clinton administration", including Kenneth Starr, Supreme Court justice Clarence Thomas and former solicitor general Robert Bork, both of whose careers were bound closely to hers.
Barbara K. Bracher was born on December 27th, 1955. She graduated from St Thomas University in her hometown of Houston, before working in Hollywood as an assistant to actor Stacy Keach. She saved enough money to enrol at the prestigious Benjamin Cardozo Law School at New York's Yeshiva University.
She wanted to defend Bork's failed appointment to the Supreme Court, and got a pro-Bork briefing from the US Justice Department, which she worked feverishly to convert into academic form for publication. This won her a fellowship in the Office of Legal Counsel, where Theodore Olson had been named an assistant attorney general by Ronald Reagan in 1981.
Staying in Washington to join the law firm of Wilmer Cutler and Pickering, she testified favourably before the senate judiciary committee about another controversial Supreme Court nominee, Clarence Thomas. The committee hired her to rehearse witnesses called to counter Anita Hill's anti-Thomas testimony.
Attractive, with long blonde hair, big jewellery and trademark spike heels, she was a natural for television, where she offered conservative takes on feminism and sexual harassment issues.
She met Theodore socially in 1989, and they married in 1996; it was her second marriage and his third.
Under President George Bush, she was appointed an assistant US attorney for the District of Columbia, prosecuting drug cases. In 1994, she joined the staff of the house committee on government reform, and led the investigations into the "travelgate" and "filegate" scandals.
She and her husband staged mock trials to help Paula Jones's lawyers prepare their case against President Clinton; it was from those lawyers that Kenneth Starr learned of Monica Lewinsky.
As media work consumed more of her time, she left the house staff to become a lobbyist. Her second book, Final Days, detailing the "looting" of the White House in the last days of the Clinton administration, is due out soon. The publisher, Regerny Books, is funded by Richard Mellon Scaife, bankroller of the anti-Clinton "Arkansas Project".
Barbara Olson is survived by her husband Theodore, a brother and sister.
Barbara Kay Bracher Olson: born 1955; died, September 2001