  Recent observations of Broad Absorption Line (BAL) quasars demonstrated that
the soft X-ray emission of these objects is extremely weak and convincing
evidence for very strong absorption by a high column density (~ 10^23.5 cm^-2)
was obtained for PG 1411+442, even though it is one of the few BAL QSOs
strongly detected in soft X-rays. This paper examines the ionization status and
geometry of the X-ray absorber by combining the properties of the UV lines with
the X-ray continuum absorption. We show that the gas has to have large column
densities in ions of major UV absorption lines, such as CIV, NV, OVI and Ne
VIII, in order to have sufficient opacity around 0.2 to 0.35 keV. The UV
absorption lines have to be saturated if the X-ray absorber intersects the line
of sight to the UV continuum emission region. A uniformly covering UV and X-ray
absorption model can be constructed for PG 1411+442 but in some other soft
X-ray detected BAL QSOs, such as PG 1001+054, the observed line optical depth
is much lower than expected from the X-ray absorbing material. We propose a
scheme in which a substantial fraction of the line of sight to the continuum
source may be covered by either an optically thick flow or clouds in a narrow
velocity range, but in which the total covering factor of either the whole flow
or all clouds is close to unity.
