Thread: Officials investigating Texas crash as a crime

Officials investigating Texas crash as a crime
By Jim Vertuno, Associated Press Writer
15 mins ago

AUSTIN, Texas – A low-flying small plane crashed into an office building that houses the Internal Revenue Service in Texas on Thursday, and officials said they were investigating whether it was an intentional act by the pilot.

The U.S. law enforcement officials said authorities were trying to determine if the pilot intentionally targeted the IRS. They spoke on condition of anonymity because the investigation is continuing.

Assistant Austin Fire Chief Harry Evans said at least one person was missing and two people were taken to a hospital. Their conditions and identities were not immediately known.

The crash sent workers fleeing as ceilings crumbled, windows shattered and flames shot out of the building.

Thick black and gray smoke was billowing out of the second and third stories of the building as fire crews using ladder trucks and hoses battled the blaze. Dozens of windows were blown out of the hulking black building.

Federal Aviation Administration spokesman Lynn Lunsford said the pilot didn't file a flight plan. He didn't identify the pilot.

As a precaution, the Colorado-based North American Aerospace Defense Command launched two F-16 aircraft from Houston's Ellington Field, and is conducting an air patrol over the crash area.

Peggy Walker, an IRS revenue officer who works in the building said she was sitting at her desk when the plane crashed.

"It felt like a bomb blew off. The ceiling caved in and windows blew in. We got up and ran," she said.

Matt Farney, 39, who was in the parking lot of a nearby Home Depot, said he saw a low-flying small plane near some apartments and the office building just before it crashed.

"I figured he was going to buzz the apartments or he was showing off," Farney said. "It was insane. ... It didn't look like he was out of control or anything."

Sitting at her desk in another building about a half-mile from the crash, Michelle Santibanez said she felt vibrations after the crash. She and her co-workers ran to the windows, where they saw a scene that reminded them of the 2001 terrorist attacks, she said.

"It was the same kind of scenario with window panels falling out and desks falling out and paperwork flying," said Santibanez, an accountant.

Fire crews were inside the building, which is located next door to a building that houses the FBI, and looking for survivors, Evans said.

National Transportation Safety Board spokesman Peter Knudson said an investigator from the board's Dallas office has been dispatched to the scene of the accident to start an investigation.

The IRS Web site said an office of its EP Team Audit Program is located in the building where the plane crashed. The group, known as EPTA, examines employee benefit plans with 2,500 or more participants, according to the Web site.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100218/...ne_crash_texas

Austin Plane Crash May Have Been Suicidal Attack on IRS
Pilot Who Flew into Austin Building Complex Identified as Andrew Stack
By SARAH NETTER, PIERRE THOMAS and JASON RYAN
Feb. 18, 2010

A single engine plane smashed into the side of an Austin office buildling today and authorities are investigating reports that the pilot may have burned down his house down and then steered the plane into the building in a suicidal attack on the IRS, sources told ABC News.

Firefighters put out a blaze caused by a plane crashing into a Texas building.The pilot was identified as Andrew Stack. The IRS has offices in the building complex that was struck.

Eyewitnesses who saw the plane slam into the building said the pilot appeared to be in control of the plane in the moments before the crash.

"It hit it and the strange thing was the engine seemed to me to running at full power. It didn't seem like the plane was in trouble. It was going full blast. It's not a very fast airplane, but this thing was really moving fast," pilot Jerry Cullen told ABC's Austin affiliate KVUE.

Beth Jones told ABCNews.com that she was headed downtown on Highway 183 when she spotted the plane overhead and immediately noticed how low it was flying.

"The plane was just coming down," she said. "He was so low you could actually see him in the plane."

Jones said that in the brief glimpse she got of the pilot he looked to be awake and not struggling. As her car passed under the plane's path she heard a "large explosion" and immediately pulled over to see the building in flames.

She said the plane flew "just straight, right in" to the complex. "You think, did he go in there on purpose?" Jones asked.



http://abcnews.go.com/WN/texas-plane...ory?id=9874966

Official: Plane crash pilot left anti-IRS Web note
By Jim Vertuno, Associated Press Writer
22 mins ago

AUSTIN, Texas – A software engineer furious with the Internal Revenue Service plowed his small plane into an office building housing nearly 200 federal tax employees on Thursday, officials said, setting off a raging fire that sent workers fleeing as thick plumes of black smoke poured into the air.

A U.S. law official identified the pilot as Joseph Stack — whose home was set on fire just before the crash — and said investigators were looking at an anti-government message on the Web linked to him. The Web site outlines problems with the IRS and says violence "is the only answer."

Federal law enforcement officials have said they were investigating whether the pilot, who is presumed to have died in the crash, slammed into the Austin building on purpose in an effort to blow up IRS offices. All the officials spoke on condition of anonymity because the investigation was ongoing.

"Violence not only is the answer, it is the only answer," the long note on Stack's Web site reads, citing past problems with the tax-collecting agency.

"I saw it written once that the definition of insanity is repeating the same process over and over and expecting the outcome to suddenly be different. I am finally ready to stop this insanity. Well, Mr. Big Brother IRS man, let's try something different; take my pound of flesh and sleep well," the note, dated Thursday, reads.

At least one person who worked in the building was unaccounted for and two people were hospitalized, said Austin Fire Department Division Chief Dawn Clopton. She did not have any information about the pilot. About 190 IRS employees work in the building, and IRS spokesman Richard C. Sanford the agency was trying to account for all of its workers.

After the plane crashed into the building, flames shot out, windows exploded and workers scrambled to safety. Thick smoke billowed out of the second and third stories hours later as fire crews battled the blaze.

"It felt like a bomb blew off," said Peggy Walker, an IRS revenue officer who was sitting at her desk in the building when the plane crashed. "The ceiling caved in and windows blew in. We got up and ran."

Andrew Jacobson was on the second floor when he heard a "big whoomp" and then a second explosion. He also thought a bomb exploded.

"When I went to look out the window I saw wreckage, wheels and everything. That's when I realized it was a plane," said Jacobson, whose bloody hands were bandaged.

Jacobson, also an IRS revenue officer, said about six people couldn't use the stairwell because of smoke and debris. He found metal bar to bust a window so the group could crawl out on a concrete ledge where they were rescued by the firefighters.

Earlier Thursday about five miles from the crash site, Stack's $232,000 home was engulfed in flames. Two law enforcement officials said Stack had apparently set fire to his home before the crash.

The roof of Stack's red brick home on a tree-lined street in a middle-class neighborhood was mostly caved in, and the home's windows were blown out. The garage doors were open and a big pile of debris was inside.

Elbert Hutchins, who lives one house away, said a woman and her teenage daughter drove up to the house before firefighters arrived.

"They both were very, very distraught," said Hutchins, a retiree who said he didn't know the family well. "'That's our house!' they cried 'That's our house!'"

Red Cross spokeswoman Marty McKellips said the agency was treating two people who live in the house. She said they would not be commenting.

"They're remarkably calm but they're clearly distraught. ... They're in need of some mental health assistance and we're providing that," McKellips said.

Federal Aviation Administration spokesman Lynn Lunsford said the pilot took off from nearby Georgetown but didn't file a flight plan. FAA records show that a Piper PA-28 Cherokee with the same tail number as the plane that flew into the building is registered to Joseph A. Stack.

Those who saw the plane before it slammed into the building were stunned to see it flying so low.

"It was insane," said Matt Farney, 39, who was in the parking lot of a nearby Home Depot. "It didn't look like he was out of control or anything."

Reginaldo Tiul-Tiul, a dishwasher at the nearby Sushi Sake Japanese Cuisine, said he had just gotten off a bus and was waiting to go into work when he saw the plane crash.

"I looked at my co-worker and said, 'Why is that plane so low?'" Tiul-Tiul, 30, said in Spanish. "It went straight for the building."

Sitting at her desk in another building about a half-mile from the crash, Michelle Santibanez said she felt vibrations. She and her co-workers ran to the windows, where they saw a scene that reminded them of the 9/11 attacks, she said.

"It was the same kind of scenario with window panels falling out and desks falling out and paperwork flying," said Santibanez, an accountant.

The National Transportation Safety Board said an investigator from the board's Dallas office has been dispatched to the scene of the crash. The White House also said President Barack Obama was briefed about the crash.

As a precaution, the Colorado-based North American Aerospace Defense Command launched two F-16 aircraft from Houston's Ellington Field, and is conducting an air patrol over the crash area.

According to California Secretary of State records, Stack had a troubled business history, twice starting software companies in California that ultimately were suspended by the state's Franchise Tax Board.

In 1985, he incorporated Prowess Engineering Inc. in Corona. It was suspended two years later. He started Software Systems Service Corp. in Lincoln in 1995 and that entity was suspended in 2001. Stack listed himself as chief executive officer of both companies.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100218/...e_crash_texas/

In this aerial view, smoke billows from a seven-story building after a small private plane crashed into a building that houses an office of the federal tax agency in Austin, Texas on Thursday Feb. 18, 2010. (AP Photo/Austin-American Statesman, Alberto Martinez) MANDATORY CREDIT. NO MAGS, NO SALES, NO TV

In this image made from KVUE-TV video, smoke billows from a seven-story building after a small private plane crashed into the building in Austin, Texas on Thursday Feb. 18, 2010.
(AP Photo/KVUE-TV) MANDATORY CREDIT

Smoke billows from a seven-story building after a small private plane crashed into the building in Austin, Texas on Thursday Feb. 18, 2010. (AP Photo/Austin American-Statesman, Claudia Grisales) MANDATORY CREDIT. NO MAGS, NO SALES, NO TV

[

Friends didn't see pilot's passion for IRS feud

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100219/...llbmRzZGlkbnQ-

AUSTIN, Texas – Joe Stack felt the federal government — especially its tax code — robbed him of his savings and destroyed his career while allowing corrupt executives to walk away with millions.

It's clear from the 3,000-word manifesto posted on a Web site registered in his name that the bitter feud with the Internal Revenue Service was his passion — one so deeply held it apparently drove him to commit suicide Thursday by slamming his single-engine Piper PA-28 into an Austin office building that houses the IRS.

"Nothing changes unless there is a body count," Stack wrote.

It was a passion some of Stack's friends say they never saw.

They knew Stack as a fellow country rocker and band mate who recorded with them in Austin's vibrant music scene. They recalled a quiet father who visited Norway every year to visit a daughter and grandchildren. They never heard Stack talk about politics, about taxes, about the government — the sources of pain Stack claims drove him to his death.

"I read the letter that he wrote. It sounded like his voice but the things he said I had never heard him say," said Pam Parker, an Austin attorney whose husband was one of Stack's band mates.

Part-autobiographical, Stack's anti-government screed references attending college in Harrisburg, Pa., a divorce and some failed business ventures in California. Mostly, though, Stack outlines his frustration with the government and the IRS. The 53-year-old contract software engineer, whose full name was A. Joseph Stack III, wrote that he spent months on the six-page diatribe in hopes it would be therapeutic.

Instead, "there isn't enough therapy in the world that can fix what is really broken," Stack wrote. He lamented that he couldn't "gracefully articulate my thoughts in light of the storm raging in my head."

The letter is dated Thursday, with the years he lived: 1956-2010.

"I think that Joe must have been hurting really bad to take these kinds of steps to make the pain stop," said the Rev. Patti Herndon, who married Stack and his wife, Sheryl, in July 2007.

In his note, Stack refers to several disputes with the IRS that cost him more than $40,000 and "10 years of my life." He twice started software companies in California that ultimately were suspended by the state's Franchise Tax Board. Stack listed himself as chief executive officer of both.

In 1985, he incorporated Prowess Engineering Inc. in Corona, Calif. In 1994, he failed to file a state tax return and was suspended in 2000 by the tax board. He started Software Systems Service Corp. in Lincoln, Calif., in 1995. That entity was suspended in 2004. Denise Azimi, spokeswoman for the Franchise Tax Board, said Stack did not pay state taxes in 1996 and 2002 — a bill totaling $1,153.

Those disputes apparently were never discussed among friends.

"I don't know what to base his madness on," said Michael Cerza, who played drums, piano and trumpet with Stack in The Billy Eli Band. "It must have been lurking beneath the surface."

Stack attended Harrisburg Area Community College from 1975-77 but did not graduate, said school spokesman Patrick M. Early. Before that, he graduated from Milton Hershey School in nearby Hershey. The Hershey school was founded and endowed by the candy magnate more than 90 years ago as a home and school for orphaned boys.

"He talked about that, and my husband and I talked about how well adjusted he was," Parker said.

Stack later married and moved to California. Parker said he had a daughter who grew up to marry a Norwegian pilot and that Stack went to Norway to visit her and his one or two grandchildren each year.

"He was a good man. Frustrated with the IRS, yes, but a good man," Stack's former wife, Ginger Stack, told the Los Angeles Times from her home in Hemet, Calif. "I'm in shock right now. He had good values. He really did."

Calls by The Associated Press to a telephone number listed for Ginger Stack in Hemet resulted in apparent hang-ups Thursday.

According to Joe Stack's letter, he moved to Austin sometime after 2001. Friends introduced the then-divorced bass guitar and piano player to Sheryl, a pianist who gives lessons. Cerza said he recently received a group e-mail in which Stack invited friends to one of his wife's piano recitals.

"Joe was very straight — didn't drink or smoke. He was intelligent, concerned about all the stuff normal people are concerned about," Cerza said. "He did not strike me as having any angular edges at all."

Parker said she last saw Stack at one of his wife's recitals, and that the couple occasionally attended classical jazz house concerts the couple hosted in their home, a 2,500 square foot house on a street lined with oak trees in a middle-class Austin neighborhood that he bought in 2007. The home was set ablaze Thursday morning, burning to the ground as Sheryl and the couple's daughter watched from the street.

"They're remarkably calm but they're clearly distraught. ... They're in need of some mental health assistance and we're providing that," said Marty McKellips, a Red Cross spokeswoman.

In his letter, Stack writes of trouble finding work in Austin and acknowledges failing to file a tax return one year because he didn't make any money. Stack's tipping point appears to be a recent audit, and the discovery of nearly $13,000 in unreported income.

"I know I'm hardly the first one to decide I have had all I can stand," Stack wrote. "But I also know that by not adding my body to the count, I insure (sic) nothing will change."

Snipes asks 'What's new?' about IRS plane crash
Michael Weinfeld, Associated Press Writer – Fri Feb 19, 5:17 pm ET

WASHINGTON – - Actor Wesley Snipes, who has tax problems of his own, had a blunt reaction to news about a software engineer who crashed his plane into an office building with nearly 200 IRS employees inside.

In an interview Friday with the Associated Press, Snipes asked, "What's new?"

Authorities say A. Joseph Stack III, who was furious with the Internal Revenue Service, crashed his plane into an Austin, Texas, building on Thursday. Stack and one other person were killed.

Snipes said tax problems have been an issue in the U.S. from the very beginning.

As the actor put it: "I think it was an issue even for the early colonists and the British, so what's new?"

Snipes, 47, was convicted in 2008 of not paying taxes for three years. He was sentenced to three years in prison and is appealing.

Despite his legal troubles, Snipes said, "All is very well. We're very positive, we're very confident that things will work out to our benefit and to our favor."

He brushed off the experience as just another part of living.

"These are the bumps and bruises of life. They build character and you learn from it as you move on."

Snipes says he still doesn't understand why the IRS pursued him.

He added, "I'm not a politician, I'm not saving the world, I haven't created a cure for cancer, I make movies ..."

In 2006, "Survivor" winner Richard Hatch was convicted of not paying his taxes and spent more than three years in jail. He complained that the IRS used him as an example.

In Snipes' opinion, "they were successful."


http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100219/...lwZXNhc2tzd2g-

Texas plane crash exposes gap in US air security
Michelle Roberts And Michael Tarm, Associated Press Writers – 16 mins ago

GEORGETOWN, Texas – After 9/11, cockpit doors were sealed, air marshals were added and airport searches became more aggressive, all to make sure an airliner could never again be used as a weapon. Yet little has been done to guard against attacks with smaller planes.

That point was driven home with chilling force on Thursday when a Texas man with a grudge against the IRS crashed his single-engine plane into an office building in a fiery suicide attack. One person inside the building was also killed.

"It's a big gap," said R. William Johnstone, an aviation security consultant and former staff member of the commission that investigated the Sept. 11 attacks. "It wouldn't take much, even a minor incident involving two simultaneously attacking planes, to inflict enough damage to set off alarm bells and do some serious harm to the economy and national psyche."

The suburban Georgetown Municipal Airport that pilot Joe Stack entered hours before his airborne attack in nearby Austin had the casual atmosphere of a sleepy parking garage. Pilots were not subject to baggage checks, metal detector scans or pat-downs. And they are usually not required to file flight plans.

"How are they going to stop it? This guy had a hangar, and he had access to the airport," said Beth Ann Jenkins, president of Pilot's Choice, a flight school near where Stack kept his Piper.

Travis McLain, manager of the airport, said: "I don't know of a rule or regulation or safety precaution that could have prevented what happened yesterday."

The easy access and lack of security are the result of years of debate — and stalemate — over how much of a threat small aircraft pose as terror weapons and how they could be regulated without stifling commerce and pilot freedom.

While the airlines quickly accepted tougher security after Sept. 11, the general aviation industry, which includes everything from privately owned propeller-driven planes to large corporate jets, have aggressively fought new measures.

The proposed rules would require that operators of medium and large general-aviation aircraft demonstrate that flight crews have undergone a criminal background check. They would also be required to verify passengers are not on the no-fly lists already used by large airlines.

Private pilots fly approximately 200,000 small and medium-size planes in the U.S., using 19,000 airports, most of them small. The planes' owners insist the aircraft have nothing in common with airliners but the sky.

"I don't see a gaping security hole here," said Tom Walsh, an aviation security consultant. "In terms of aviation security, there are much bigger fish to fry than worrying about small aircraft."

He said most would-be terrorists would draw the same conclusion — that tiny aircraft don't pack a big enough punch.

Planes like Stack's weigh just a few thousands pounds and carry no more than 100 gallons of fuel, he noted. A Boeing 767 weighs 400,000 pounds and carries up to 25,000 gallons of fuel.

Walsh and other general aviation advocates argue that stringent security and bureaucracy would deter recreational fliers and slow down a vibrant, multibillion-dollar general aviation industry, causing economic damage.

"What it comes down to is that the cure could be worse than the disease," he said.

Jeffrey Price, a Denver-based aviation expert, said: "If I own my plane, I can drive to the airport, get in and just take off. Pilots want that sense of freedom. ... Like motorcycle riders."

Every pilot, from the beginner student to the commercial airline pilot, is checked against the government's terror watchlist. Also, under federal rules imposed after Sept. 11, people enrolling in flight schools must show proof of U.S. citizenship or, if they are foreigners, must undergo a background check.

All pilots of every stripe must have with them every time they fly a medical certificate attesting to their health. The certificate is based on a physical exam, but the application form also includes questions about the pilot's mental health. Stack's medical certificate was current, dated May 2009. He was an instrument rated pilot, able to fly single-engine and multiengine airplanes, and no enforcement action had ever been taken against him.

Beyond that, however, most security measures at general aviation airports are voluntary.

The Transportation Department's inspector general, Richard L. Skinner, reviewed security at several general aviation airports last year, including three in the Houston area, and concluded that general aviation "presents only limited and mostly hypothetical threats to security."

Skinner did endorse efforts to lock or disable parked planes to prevent people bent on mayhem from stealing them.

Tougher restrictions were debated after Sept. 11 and after a few incidents in which pilots deliberately crashed small planes into buildings.

In 1994, a Maryland truck driver with a history of instability crashed a plane on the south lawn of the White House. In 2002, a 15-year-old boy stole a plane and crashed it into a downtown skyscraper in Tampa, Fla. Pilots of small planes have also frequently flown into the secure airspace over the key government buildings in Washington.

The general aviation lobby has exerted its considerable clout to fend off new measures. The Aircraft Owners and Pilots Association, or AOPA, National Business Aviation Association, National Air Transportation Association and General Aviation Manufacturers Association spent $6 million lobbying in Washington last year.

"There was no way to impose one overall security structure that would fit every general aviation airport's needs," said AOPA spokesman Chris Dancy. The association has about 400,000 members.

At the Georgetown airport, where 240 small aircraft are based, manager McLain said she hopes Stack's suicidal attack doesn't lead to an overreaction.

"I would hope that common sense and cooler heads would prevail," McLain said.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100220/...FzcGxhbmVjcg--

Daughter says pilot in Texas IRS crash was a hero

AP – In this undated photo provided by Texas Department of Public Safety, Joseph Stack is shown.

2 hrs 25 mins ago

AUSTIN, Texas – The daughter of a man who crashed his small plane into a building housing offices of the Internal Revenue Service called her father a hero for his anti-government views but said his actions, which killed an IRS employee, were "inappropriate."

Joe Stack's adult daughter, Samantha Bell, spoke to ABC's "Good Morning America" from her home in Norway. Asked during a phone interview broadcast Monday if she considered her father a hero, she said: "Yes. Because now maybe people will listen."

Authorities say Stack, 53, targeted the IRS office building in Austin on Thursday, killing employee Vernon Hunter and himself, after posting a ranting manifesto against the agency and the government. He apparently set fire to his home before flying his plane into the office building.

Hunter's son, Ken Hunter, said he's alarmed by comments that the pilot was a hero.

"How can you call someone a hero who after he burns down his house, he gets into his plane ... and flies it into a building to kill people?" Hunter told ABC." "My dad Vernon did two tours of duty in Vietnam. My dad's a hero."

Bell said she offered her deepest condolences to Hunter's family. She said her father's last actions were wrong. "But if nobody comes out and speaks up on behalf of injustice, then nothing will ever be accomplished," she told ABC. "But I do not agree with his last action with what he did. But I do agree about the government,"

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100222/...dodGVyc2F5cw--


I think the daughter needs to stay in Norway ... I wonder what the wife and daughter who no longer have a HOME - or a husband and father - think about this statement ?

To some, suicide attack on IRS made pilot a hero
[i]
Jeff Carlton And Ian Macdougall, Associated Press Writers
Mon Feb 22, 8:21 pm ET

DALLAS – Flames were still shooting from the building when the suicide pilot who crashed his plane into the IRS office in Austin was being hailed in some corners as a hero who struck a courageous blow against the tyranny of the U.S. tax code.

While most Americans surely see Joseph Stack as an angry, misguided man whose final act was repugnant, his suicide mission has clearly tapped a vein of rage among anti-tax, anti-government extremists. The way they see it, "he did the ultimate flipping of the bird to the man," said JJ MacNab, a Maryland-based insurance analyst who is writing a book about tax protesters. "He stuck it to the man, and they love that."

It is not surprising Stack would be portrayed as a hero on fringe Web sites such as stormfront.org, a forum for white supremacists. But admirers also are expressing their appreciation on mainstream sites such as Facebook, where a fan page supporting some of the things he said in his six-page manifesto had more than 2,000 members Monday.

Stack, 53, left behind a rambling, 3,000-word screed in which he ranted about his financial reverses, his difficulty finding work in Austin and his hatred of big business. Mostly, though, he focused on his clashes with the IRS, including one after he failed to file a tax return because he said he had no income. Stack traced his problems to a 1986 change in the tax code affecting software contractors like him.

In Texas, Republican gubernatorial candidate Debra Medina told a San Antonio radio station last week she did not sympathize with Stack, but that his act reflected "the hopelessness many in our society feel."

"There is a sense in all of our country that we are not on the right path," she said.

Asked whether she considered her father a hero, Stack's adult daughter, Samantha Dawn Bell, said during a telephone interview broadcast Monday on ABC's "Good Morning America": "Yes. Because now maybe people will listen." But she stressed that his actions were "inappropriate."

Later, though, in an interview with The Associated Press in Norway, where she lives, she said she does not consider her father a hero. She said she understands her father's animosity toward a "faulty" and "unbalanced" American tax system. But she said he should have found "a completely different way" to address it. "Write letters — that's what he should have done, rather than actually doing what he did," she said.

Threats against IRS employees have steadily increased in the past five years, climbing from 834 in fiscal 2005 to 1,014 threats in 2009, according to J. Russell George, the Treasury Department's inspector general for tax administration. "The new commissioner of the Internal Revenue Service has made it clear, and rightfully so, that people who owe the IRS money should pay the money they owe," George said. "That activity, coupled with the economy as well as a general sense of unease, have caused people to react in ways we all hoped they would not."

Since the attack, security has been tightened at IRS offices across the country, he said.

IRS Commissioner Doug Shulman, who joined U.S. Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner in a Monday meeting with employees who were inside the building when Stack flew into it, said employees would "continue to serve their country and the nation's taxpayers with dignity and respect."

"An act like this won't get in the way with us doing our job," Shulman said.

Geithner read a letter of support from President Barack Obama. "I think all Americans owe them their support and their encouragement in this time of tragedy," Geithner said afterward.

Mark Potok, a director at the Southern Poverty Law Center, which tracks white supremacists and other hate groups, said the attack on the IRS has been endorsed by extremists even more enthusiastically than the shooting rampage last June at the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington that left a security guard dead. "I think Joseph Stack has tapped into a very deep vein of rage against the government," he said.

On one Internet thread full of praise for Stack, one person wrote that he must "suppress the urge to take flying lessons."

Pensacola, Fla., pastor and radio host Chuck Baldwin wrote on his Web site that he wished Stack had not died "because we need each other." He added: "My heart goes out to Joe Stack! The sentiments expressed above are shared by millions of Americans who are also fed up with Big Brother."

Larken Rose, a 41-year-old Pennsylvania man who served a year in prison for willful failure to file an income tax return, said he does not consider the IRS employee killed in the attack and the man's injured co-workers to be innocent victims. "I don't know how many people they harassed or how many houses they had stolen or how many bank accounts they had swiped," he told the AP. Stack's letter "shows quite obviously he was not crazy. He was frustrated. He had been wronged over and over."

The IRS kept a master list of tax protesters until 1998, when a change in the law prevented the agency from tracking them. MacNab estimated there are more than 500,000 tax protesters today, the vast majority of whom do not file tax returns. "There are people who sympathize with this crime and turn the criminal into a hero," said Fathali Moghaddam, a psychology professor at Georgetown University. "At tax time, what better authority figure to hit than the tax man?"

Moghaddam also said the ease and anonymity of the Internet have helped bring like-minded zealots together. "It may be that 50 years ago, there would be 200 people who would like to express support for this kind of action but they couldn't, because there was nobody in their neighborhood to connect with," the professor said.

Stack has not been linked to any specific political philosophy or party, though his anti-government views are sometimes espoused by Tea Party members in Texas who have supported Medina's surprising run against Texas Gov. Rick Perry and Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison.

Phillip Dennis, a leader of the 15,000-member Dallas Tea Party, disavowed any connection to Stack. "We never advocate violence and overthrow of the government," Dennis said. "We have a framework to solve problems, and that framework does not include flying airplanes into buildings."

What Stack did do, Dennis said, was "tap into some people's anger with a large and growing government, a government that doesn't listen to the people."

The family of Vernon Hunter, the longtime IRS employee and father of six who was killed in the suicide attack, rejected any suggestion Stack was a hero. "People say (Stack) is a patriot. What's he a patriot for? He hasn't served the country," said Hunter's son, Ken Hunter. "My dad did two tours of Vietnam and this guy is going to be a patriot and no one is going to say that about my dad?"

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100223/...NvbWVzdWljaWQ-

To some, suicide attack on IRS made pilot a hero

and to some he is a cowardly weasel .... Why burn your own dang house down ... with your wife and child inside ? Now they have no where to live ... all their possessions turned to ash and their "protector" dead in a flaming pryre of his own creation. Some "hero"

Officials rule arson caused fire at pilot's house
Thu Feb 25, 8:55 am ET

AUSTIN, Texas – Authorities in Texas have ruled arson is the official cause of the fire that destroyed the house belonging to the man who flew his plane into an office building.

Austin Fire Department spokesman Andre de la Reza (day-luh-RAY'-suh) said Thursday that the Feb. 18 blaze was intentionally set. Investigators say Joseph Stack started the blaze, drove to a nearby airport and then flew his single-engine plane into the complex that houses offices of the Internal Revenue Service. The crash killed Stack and IRS employee Vernon Hunter.

Authorities later found a rambling manifesto from Stack in which he described a long-smoldering dispute with the IRS and a hatred of the government.

The family's accountant has confirmed that the Stacks were in the middle of an audit for reportedly failing to report income.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100225/...ljaWFsc3J1bA--

IRS Employees Face Rising Threats
Armed Escorts for Employees Amid Fear of Copy-Cat Attacks
By LISA JONES and PIERRE THOMAS
Feb. 23, 2010
http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/irs-e...ory?id=9919368

suicidal pilot's attack on an Internal Revenue Service building in Austin, Texas, last week was the worst but hardly the lone example of threats against the tax agency, according to the U.S. government.

Treasury officials claim that there have been about 900 threats in recent years.The number of threats against the tax-collection agency has increased significantly in recent years, Treasury Department officials said.

There were 1,200 threats and assaults against IRS employees from 2001 to 2008, resulting in 195 convictions, according to officials. J. Russell George, the Treasury inspector general for tax administration, said threats that once averaged 170 or so a year are now up to about 900.

Some recent examples: a man in tax trouble hired someone to kill an IRS employee in Tampa, Fla.; an Alabama man tried to use his car as a deadly weapon by driving into an IRS building; and two arsonists in Colorado Springs, Colo., used a sledge hammer to break into and then torch an IRS building.

Some threats are so serious that armed escorts join IRS employees at meetings with potentially dangerous taxpayers.

The agency deployed such protection for IRS employees 23 times from April to September last year under a new initiative, according to Treasury officials. It's not unusual, the IRS said, to dispatch a protection agent once a week for one of its 90,000 employees.

Fathali Moghaddam, a Georgetown University psychology professor, blamed the rise in these kinds of threats on a difficult economic climate that leads to discontent and frustration in people. There's also global insecurity because of the greater interconnectedness of the modern world, he said.

"There are all kinds of threats against us, and citizens have a social contract," Moghaddam said. "They ask, 'Is the government protecting us from economic downturn, from terrorism?' There is a feeling that authorities are not doing enough, that Americans are paying their tax dollars and are looking for government to do something, but they look incompetent."

More Enforcement, More Threats

Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner and IRS Commissioner Doug Shulman on Monday toured the remains of the damaged IRS building in Austin, where nearly 200 IRS employees worked. They expressed condolences to the family of the IRS employee who died in the attack. "I just want to say how proud we are of the men and women of the IRS," Geithner said. "We came to show them respect and support."

Inspector general George said, "There is a direct rise between enhanced enforcement efforts and direct threats made against IRS employees."

Given last week's attack, he said, "I have to say I am concerned about copy cats."