2010 Austin plane crash
Encyclopedia
The 2010 Austin suicide attack occurred on 18 February 2010, when Andrew Joseph Stack III, flying his Piper Dakota
, crashed into Building I of the Echelon office complex in Austin, Texas
, United States, killing himself and Internal Revenue Service
manager Vernon Hunter. Thirteen others were injured, two seriously. The Internal Revenue Service (IRS) field office was located in a four-story office building along with other state and federal government agencies. Prior to the crash, Stack had posted a suicide note
dated 18 February 2010 to his business website.
, approximately 20 miles to the north. He boarded his single-engine Piper Dakota airplane and was cleared to take off around 9:45 a.m. Central Standard Time. He indicated to the control tower
his flight would be "going southbound, sir." After taking off his final words were "thanks for your help, have a great day."
About ten minutes later his plane descended and collided at full speed into Echelon I, a building containing offices for 190 IRS employees, resulting in a large fireball and explosion. The building is located near the intersection of Research Boulevard (U.S. Route 183
) and Mopac Expressway (Loop 1).
consultant. He grew up in Pennsylvania
and had two brothers and two sisters, was orphaned at age four, and spent some time at a Catholic orphanage. He graduated from the Milton Hershey School
in 1974 and studied engineering at Harrisburg Area Community College
from 1975 to 1977 but did not graduate. His first marriage to Ginger Stack, which ended in divorce, produced a daughter, Samantha Bell. In 2007 Stack had remarried to Sheryl Housh who had a daughter from a previous marriage.
In 1985, Stack, along with his first wife, incorporated Prowess Engineering. In 1994, he failed to file a state tax return. In 1998, the Stacks divorced and a year later his wife filed Chapter 11 Bankruptcy
, citing IRS liabilities totaling nearly $126,000. In 1995, Stack started Software Systems Service Corp, which was suspended in 2004 for non-payment of state taxes. It was revealed in CNN and ABC news broadcasts by another software consultant who testified that the IRS had taken away a tax status for software consultants, which might have set off the incident with Stack.
Stack obtained a pilot's license in 1994 and owned a Velocity Elite XL-RG
plane, in addition to the Piper Dakota
(aircraft registration
N2889D) he flew into the Echelon building. He had been using the Georgetown Municipal Airport for four and a half years and paid $236.25 a month to rent a hangar
. There has been speculation that Stack replaced seats on his aircraft with extra drums of fuel prior to the collision.
Stack's accountant
confirmed that he was being audited
by the IRS for failure to report income at the time of the incident.
on his website, embeddedart.com. The HTML
source code
of the web page shows the letter was composed using Microsoft Word
starting two days prior, February 16, at 19:24Z (1:24 p.m. CST). The document also shows that it was saved 27 times with the last being February 18 at 06:42Z (12:42 a.m. CST).
In the suicide note, he begins by expressing displeasure with the government, the bailout of financial institutions
, politicians, the conglomerate companies
of General Motors
, Enron
and Arthur Andersen
, union
s, drug
and health care insurance companies
, and the Catholic Church. He then describes his life as an engineer; including his meeting with a poor widow who never got the pension benefits she was promised, the effect of the Section 1706 of Tax Reform Act of 1986
on independent contractor engineers, the September 11 attacks airline bailouts that only benefited the airlines but not the suffering engineers and how a CPA
he hired seemed to side with the government to take extra tax money from him. His suicide note included criticism of the FAA, the George W. Bush
administration, and a call for violent revolt.
The suicide note also mentions, several times, Stack's having issues with taxes, debt, and the IRS and his having a long-running feud with the organization. While the IRS also has a larger regional office in Austin, the field office located in Echelon I performed tax audits, seizures, investigations and collections.
The suicide note ended with:
, saw the collision while commuting to his job, and used the ladder on his truck to rescue five people from the building. By coincidence, the Travis County Hazardous Materials Team — an inter-agency group of firefighters from outside the City of Austin — had just assembled for training across the freeway from the targeted building, observed the low and fast flight of Stack's plane, and heard the blast impact. They immediately responded, attacking the fire and initiating search-and-rescue. Several City of Austin fire engines for the area of the Echelon building were already deployed at the fire at Stack's home at the time of the impact.
Stack's North Austin home was mostly destroyed by fire.
Georgetown Municipal Airport
was temporarily evacuated while a bomb disposal
team searched Stack's abandoned vehicle.
An inspection into the Echelon building's structural integrity was concluded six days after the incident and a preliminary decision was made to repair the building rather than demolish it.
issued a statement saying that the incident did not appear to be linked to organized international terrorist
groups. White House
spokesman Robert Gibbs
reaffirmed what Homeland Security said, and that President Barack Obama
was briefed on the incident. The President expressed his concern and commended the courageous actions of the first responders. The North American Aerospace Defense Command
(NORAD) launched two F-16
fighter aircraft from Ellington Airport in Houston, Texas, to conduct an air patrol in response to the crash. That action was reported as standard operating procedure in this situation.
The company hosting embeddedart.com, T35 hosting, took Stack's website offline "due to the sensitive nature of the events that transpired in Texas this morning and in compliance with a request from the FBI." Several groups supporting Stack on the social networking website Facebook
appeared following the incident and the news of the accompanying manifesto. These were immediately shut down by Facebook staff.
Austin police chief Art Acevedo stated that the incident was not the action of a major terrorist organization. He also cited "some heroic actions on the part of federal employees" that "will be told at the appropriate time."
The Federal Bureau of Investigation
stated that it was investigating the incident "as a criminal matter of an assault on a federal officer" and that it was not being considered terrorism at this time.
However, two members of the United States House of Representatives
, both of whose districts include the Austin area, made statements to the contrary. Rep. Lloyd Doggett
(D-Texas
) stated, "Like the larger-scale tragedy in Oklahoma City, this was a cowardly act of domestic terrorism." Mike McCaul (R-Texas), told a reporter that, "it sounds like it [was a terrorist attack] to me." Nihad Awad
, the Executive Director of the Council on American-Islamic Relations
(CAIR), is also asking the federal government to classify this as an act of terrorism. In a statement on February 19, he said, "Whenever an individual or group attacks civilians in order to make a political statement, that is an act of terror. Terrorism is terrorism, regardless of the faith, race or ethnicity of the perpetrator or the victims. If a Muslim had carried out the IRS attack, it would have surely been labeled an act of terrorism." Georgetown University
Professor Bruce Hoffman
stated that for this to be considered an act of terrorism, "there has to be some political motive and it has to send a broader message that seeks some policy change. From what I've heard, that doesn't appear to be the case. It appears he was very mad at the [IRS] and this was a cathartic outburst of violence. His motivation was the key." A USA Today
headline used the term "a chilling echo of terrorism."
Citing the copy of Joseph Stack's suicide note posted online, the liberal Daily Kos
website observed that, "Obviously Stack was not a mentally healthy person, and he was embittered at capitalism, including crony capitalism, and health insurance companies and the government." They also stated that Stack could not be connected with the popular Tea Party movement
, but argued that the incident "should inject a bit of caution into the anti-government flame-throwers on the right." The website Ace of Spades HQ disputed any connection to the movement and additionally stated Stack was not "right wing", citing Stack's criticism of politician
s for not doing anything about health care reform
.
In an interview with ABC
's Good Morning America
, Joe Stack's adult daughter, Samantha Bell, who now lives in Norway, stated that she considered her father to be a hero, because she felt that now people might listen. While she does not agree with his specific actions involving the plane crash, she does agree with his actions about speaking out against "injustice" and "the government." Bell subsequently retracted aspects of her statement, saying her father was "not a hero" and adding, "We are mourning for Vernon Hunter."
Five days after her husband Vernon Hunter's death, Valerie Hunter filed a wrongful death lawsuit
against Sheryl Mann Stack, Andrew Joseph Stack's widow in District Court
. The lawsuit alleges that Sheryl had a duty to "avoid a foreseeable risk of injury to others," including her late husband and failed to do so by not warning others about her late husband. The lawsuit also mentions that Stack was required by law to fly his plane at an altitude 1,000 feet above the highest obstacle. At a March 8, 2010 benefit event, Stack's widow Sheryl publicly offered condolences for the victims of the attack.
Iowa
congressman
Steve King
(R
-Iowa
) has made several statements regarding Stack including "I think if we’d abolished the IRS back when I first advocated it, he wouldn’t have a target for his airplane. And I’m still for abolishing the IRS, I’ve been for it for thirty years and I’m for a national sales tax (in its place)."
Noted libertarian socialist
American intellectual Noam Chomsky
cited Joe Stack's suicide letter as indicative of some of the public sentiment in the U.S., stated that several of Stack's assertions are accurate or based on real grievances, and urged people to "help" the Joseph Stacks of the world get involved in constructive popular movements instead of letting the Joseph Stacks "destroy themselves, and maybe the world,"
in order to prevent a process similar to how legitimate and valid popular grievances of the German people in the 1920s and 1930s were manipulated by the Nazis towards violence and away from constructive ends.
The Internal Revenue Service formally designates certain individuals as potentially dangerous taxpayer
s (PDTs). In response to an inquiry after the attack, an IRS spokesperson declined to state whether Stack had been designated as a PDT.
Piper Cherokee
The Piper PA-28 Cherokee is a family of light aircraft designed for flight training, air taxi, and personal use. It is built by Piper Aircraft....
, crashed into Building I of the Echelon office complex in Austin, Texas
Austin, Texas
Austin is the capital city of the U.S. state of :Texas and the seat of Travis County. Located in Central Texas on the eastern edge of the American Southwest, it is the fourth-largest city in Texas and the 14th most populous city in the United States. It was the third-fastest-growing large city in...
, United States, killing himself and Internal Revenue Service
Internal Revenue Service
The Internal Revenue Service is the revenue service of the United States federal government. The agency is a bureau of the Department of the Treasury, and is under the immediate direction of the Commissioner of Internal Revenue...
manager Vernon Hunter. Thirteen others were injured, two seriously. The Internal Revenue Service (IRS) field office was located in a four-story office building along with other state and federal government agencies. Prior to the crash, Stack had posted a suicide note
Suicide note
A suicide note or death note is a message that states the author has died by suicide, and left to be discovered and read in anticipation of suicide....
dated 18 February 2010 to his business website.
Incident
Approximately an hour before the crash, Stack allegedly set fire to his $230,000 house located on Dapplegrey Lane in North Austin. He then drove to a hangar he rented at Georgetown Municipal AirportGeorgetown Municipal Airport
Georgetown Municipal Airport is a public use airport in Williamson County, Texas, United States. It is owned by the City of Georgetown and is located three nautical miles north of the central business district. According to the FAA's National Plan of Integrated Airport Systems for 2007–2011, it is...
, approximately 20 miles to the north. He boarded his single-engine Piper Dakota airplane and was cleared to take off around 9:45 a.m. Central Standard Time. He indicated to the control tower
Control tower
A control tower, or more specifically an Air Traffic Control Tower , is the name of the airport building from which the air traffic control unit controls the movement of aircraft on and around the airport. Control towers are also used to control the traffic for other forms of transportation such...
his flight would be "going southbound, sir." After taking off his final words were "thanks for your help, have a great day."
About ten minutes later his plane descended and collided at full speed into Echelon I, a building containing offices for 190 IRS employees, resulting in a large fireball and explosion. The building is located near the intersection of Research Boulevard (U.S. Route 183
U.S. Route 183
U.S. Route 183 is a north–south United States highway. U.S. 183 was the last US route to be completely paved. The 20 mile segment in Loup County, Nebraska, north of Taylor, was unpaved until 1967. The highway's northern terminus is in Presho, South Dakota, at an intersection with...
) and Mopac Expressway (Loop 1).
Pilot
The plane was piloted by Andrew Joseph Stack III of the Scofield Farms neighborhood in North Austin, who worked as an embedded softwareEmbedded software
Embedded software is computer software that plays an integral role in the electronics it is supplied with.Embedded software's principal role is not Information technology , but rather the interaction with the physical world. It's written for machines that are not, first and foremost, computers...
consultant. He grew up in Pennsylvania
Pennsylvania
The Commonwealth of Pennsylvania is a U.S. state that is located in the Northeastern and Mid-Atlantic regions of the United States. The state borders Delaware and Maryland to the south, West Virginia to the southwest, Ohio to the west, New York and Ontario, Canada, to the north, and New Jersey to...
and had two brothers and two sisters, was orphaned at age four, and spent some time at a Catholic orphanage. He graduated from the Milton Hershey School
Milton Hershey School
The Milton Hershey School is a private philanthropic boarding school in Hershey, Pennsylvania. Originally named the Hershey Industrial School, the institution was founded and funded by chocolate industrialist Milton Snavely Hershey and his wife, Catherine Sweeney Hershey...
in 1974 and studied engineering at Harrisburg Area Community College
Harrisburg Area Community College
HACC, Central Pennsylvania's Community College is a community college in the United States serving the greater Harrisburg, Pennsylvania metropolitan area. HACC is accredited by the Commission on Higher Education of the Middle States Association of Colleges and Schools...
from 1975 to 1977 but did not graduate. His first marriage to Ginger Stack, which ended in divorce, produced a daughter, Samantha Bell. In 2007 Stack had remarried to Sheryl Housh who had a daughter from a previous marriage.
In 1985, Stack, along with his first wife, incorporated Prowess Engineering. In 1994, he failed to file a state tax return. In 1998, the Stacks divorced and a year later his wife filed Chapter 11 Bankruptcy
Chapter 11, Title 11, United States Code
Chapter 11 is a chapter of the United States Bankruptcy Code, which permits reorganization under the bankruptcy laws of the United States. Chapter 11 bankruptcy is available to every business, whether organized as a corporation or sole proprietorship, and to individuals, although it is most...
, citing IRS liabilities totaling nearly $126,000. In 1995, Stack started Software Systems Service Corp, which was suspended in 2004 for non-payment of state taxes. It was revealed in CNN and ABC news broadcasts by another software consultant who testified that the IRS had taken away a tax status for software consultants, which might have set off the incident with Stack.
Stack obtained a pilot's license in 1994 and owned a Velocity Elite XL-RG
Velocity XL
The Velocity XL is the eXtra Large version of the canard pusher aircraft from Velocity, Inc..-Standard propeller-driven XL:The standard Velocity XL is available in 4 seat or 5 seat configurations. Powered by either a Lycoming , IO-540 engine or a Teledyne Continental IO-550, the XL offers a...
plane, in addition to the Piper Dakota
Piper Cherokee
The Piper PA-28 Cherokee is a family of light aircraft designed for flight training, air taxi, and personal use. It is built by Piper Aircraft....
(aircraft registration
Aircraft registration
An aircraft registration is a unique alphanumeric string that identifies a civil aircraft, in similar fashion to a licence plate on an automobile...
N2889D) he flew into the Echelon building. He had been using the Georgetown Municipal Airport for four and a half years and paid $236.25 a month to rent a hangar
Hangar
A hangar is a closed structure to hold aircraft or spacecraft in protective storage. Most hangars are built of metal, but other materials such as wood and concrete are also sometimes used...
. There has been speculation that Stack replaced seats on his aircraft with extra drums of fuel prior to the collision.
Stack's accountant
Certified Public Accountant
Certified Public Accountant is the statutory title of qualified accountants in the United States who have passed the Uniform Certified Public Accountant Examination and have met additional state education and experience requirements for certification as a CPA...
confirmed that he was being audited
Financial audit
A financial audit, or more accurately, an audit of financial statements, is the verification of the financial statements of a legal entity, with a view to express an audit opinion...
by the IRS for failure to report income at the time of the incident.
Suicide note
On the morning of the crash, Stack posted a suicide noteSuicide note
A suicide note or death note is a message that states the author has died by suicide, and left to be discovered and read in anticipation of suicide....
on his website, embeddedart.com. The HTML
HTML
HyperText Markup Language is the predominant markup language for web pages. HTML elements are the basic building-blocks of webpages....
source code
Source code
In computer science, source code is text written using the format and syntax of the programming language that it is being written in. Such a language is specially designed to facilitate the work of computer programmers, who specify the actions to be performed by a computer mostly by writing source...
of the web page shows the letter was composed using Microsoft Word
Microsoft Word
Microsoft Word is a word processor designed by Microsoft. It was first released in 1983 under the name Multi-Tool Word for Xenix systems. Subsequent versions were later written for several other platforms including IBM PCs running DOS , the Apple Macintosh , the AT&T Unix PC , Atari ST , SCO UNIX,...
starting two days prior, February 16, at 19:24Z (1:24 p.m. CST). The document also shows that it was saved 27 times with the last being February 18 at 06:42Z (12:42 a.m. CST).
In the suicide note, he begins by expressing displeasure with the government, the bailout of financial institutions
Emergency Economic Stabilization Act of 2008
The Emergency Economic Stabilization Act of 2008 The Emergency Economic Stabilization Act of 2008 The Emergency Economic Stabilization Act of 2008 (Division A of , commonly referred to as a bailout of the U.S. financial system, is a law enacted in response to the subprime mortgage crisis...
, politicians, the conglomerate companies
Conglomerate (company)
A conglomerate is a combination of two or more corporations engaged in entirely different businesses that fall under one corporate structure , usually involving a parent company and several subsidiaries. Often, a conglomerate is a multi-industry company...
of General Motors
General Motors
General Motors Company , commonly known as GM, formerly incorporated as General Motors Corporation, is an American multinational automotive corporation headquartered in Detroit, Michigan and the world's second-largest automaker in 2010...
, Enron
Enron
Enron Corporation was an American energy, commodities, and services company based in Houston, Texas. Before its bankruptcy on December 2, 2001, Enron employed approximately 22,000 staff and was one of the world's leading electricity, natural gas, communications, and pulp and paper companies, with...
and Arthur Andersen
Arthur Andersen
Arthur Andersen LLP, based in Chicago, was once one of the "Big Five" accounting firms among PricewaterhouseCoopers, Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu, Ernst & Young and KPMG, providing auditing, tax, and consulting services to large corporations...
, union
Trade union
A trade union, trades union or labor union is an organization of workers that have banded together to achieve common goals such as better working conditions. The trade union, through its leadership, bargains with the employer on behalf of union members and negotiates labour contracts with...
s, drug
Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America
Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America , founded in 1958, is a trade group representing the pharmaceutical research and biopharmaceutical companies in the United States. PhRMA's stated mission is advocacy for public policies that encourage the discovery of new medicines for patients...
and health care insurance companies
Health care in the United States
Health care in the United States is provided by many separate legal entities. Health care facilities are largely owned and operated by the private sector...
, and the Catholic Church. He then describes his life as an engineer; including his meeting with a poor widow who never got the pension benefits she was promised, the effect of the Section 1706 of Tax Reform Act of 1986
Tax Reform Act of 1986
The U.S. Congress passed the Tax Reform Act of 1986 to simplify the income tax code, broaden the tax base and eliminate many tax shelters and other preferences...
on independent contractor engineers, the September 11 attacks airline bailouts that only benefited the airlines but not the suffering engineers and how a CPA
Certified Public Accountant
Certified Public Accountant is the statutory title of qualified accountants in the United States who have passed the Uniform Certified Public Accountant Examination and have met additional state education and experience requirements for certification as a CPA...
he hired seemed to side with the government to take extra tax money from him. His suicide note included criticism of the FAA, the George W. Bush
George W. Bush
George Walker Bush is an American politician who served as the 43rd President of the United States, from 2001 to 2009. Before that, he was the 46th Governor of Texas, having served from 1995 to 2000....
administration, and a call for violent revolt.
The suicide note also mentions, several times, Stack's having issues with taxes, debt, and the IRS and his having a long-running feud with the organization. While the IRS also has a larger regional office in Austin, the field office located in Echelon I performed tax audits, seizures, investigations and collections.
The suicide note ended with:
Aftermath
Killed in the incident along with Stack was Vernon Hunter, a 68-year-old Revenue Officer Group Manager for the IRS. Thirteen people were reported as injured, two of them critically. Debris from the crash reportedly struck a car being driven on the southbound access road of Route 183 in front of the building, shattering the windshield. Another driver on the southbound access road of Route 183 had his windows and sunroof shattered during the impact, and had debris fall inside his car, yet escaped uninjured. Robin Dehaven, a glass worker and former combat engineer for the United States ArmyUnited States Army
The United States Army is the main branch of the United States Armed Forces responsible for land-based military operations. It is the largest and oldest established branch of the U.S. military, and is one of seven U.S. uniformed services...
, saw the collision while commuting to his job, and used the ladder on his truck to rescue five people from the building. By coincidence, the Travis County Hazardous Materials Team — an inter-agency group of firefighters from outside the City of Austin — had just assembled for training across the freeway from the targeted building, observed the low and fast flight of Stack's plane, and heard the blast impact. They immediately responded, attacking the fire and initiating search-and-rescue. Several City of Austin fire engines for the area of the Echelon building were already deployed at the fire at Stack's home at the time of the impact.
Stack's North Austin home was mostly destroyed by fire.
Georgetown Municipal Airport
Georgetown Municipal Airport
Georgetown Municipal Airport is a public use airport in Williamson County, Texas, United States. It is owned by the City of Georgetown and is located three nautical miles north of the central business district. According to the FAA's National Plan of Integrated Airport Systems for 2007–2011, it is...
was temporarily evacuated while a bomb disposal
Bomb disposal
Bomb disposal is the process by which hazardous explosive devices are rendered safe. Bomb disposal is an all encompassing term to describe the separate, but interrelated functions in the following fields:*Military:...
team searched Stack's abandoned vehicle.
An inspection into the Echelon building's structural integrity was concluded six days after the incident and a preliminary decision was made to repair the building rather than demolish it.
Reaction
The United States Department of Homeland SecurityUnited States Department of Homeland Security
The United States Department of Homeland Security is a cabinet department of the United States federal government, created in response to the September 11 attacks, and with the primary responsibilities of protecting the territory of the United States and protectorates from and responding to...
issued a statement saying that the incident did not appear to be linked to organized international terrorist
Terrorism
Terrorism is the systematic use of terror, especially as a means of coercion. In the international community, however, terrorism has no universally agreed, legally binding, criminal law definition...
groups. White House
White House
The White House is the official residence and principal workplace of the president of the United States. Located at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue NW in Washington, D.C., the house was designed by Irish-born James Hoban, and built between 1792 and 1800 of white-painted Aquia sandstone in the Neoclassical...
spokesman Robert Gibbs
Robert Gibbs
Robert Lane Gibbs was the 28th White House Press Secretary. Gibbs was the communications director for then-U.S. Senator Barack Obama and Obama's 2008 presidential campaign...
reaffirmed what Homeland Security said, and that President Barack Obama
Barack Obama
Barack Hussein Obama II is the 44th and current President of the United States. He is the first African American to hold the office. Obama previously served as a United States Senator from Illinois, from January 2005 until he resigned following his victory in the 2008 presidential election.Born in...
was briefed on the incident. The President expressed his concern and commended the courageous actions of the first responders. The North American Aerospace Defense Command
North American Aerospace Defense Command
North American Aerospace Defense Command is a joint organization of Canada and the United States that provides aerospace warning, air sovereignty, and defense for the two countries. Headquarters NORAD is located at Peterson AFB, Colorado Springs, Colorado...
(NORAD) launched two F-16
F-16 Fighting Falcon
The General Dynamics F-16 Fighting Falcon is a multirole jet fighter aircraft originally developed by General Dynamics for the United States Air Force . Designed as an air superiority day fighter, it evolved into a successful all-weather multirole aircraft. Over 4,400 aircraft have been built since...
fighter aircraft from Ellington Airport in Houston, Texas, to conduct an air patrol in response to the crash. That action was reported as standard operating procedure in this situation.
The company hosting embeddedart.com, T35 hosting, took Stack's website offline "due to the sensitive nature of the events that transpired in Texas this morning and in compliance with a request from the FBI." Several groups supporting Stack on the social networking website Facebook
Facebook
Facebook is a social networking service and website launched in February 2004, operated and privately owned by Facebook, Inc. , Facebook has more than 800 million active users. Users must register before using the site, after which they may create a personal profile, add other users as...
appeared following the incident and the news of the accompanying manifesto. These were immediately shut down by Facebook staff.
Austin police chief Art Acevedo stated that the incident was not the action of a major terrorist organization. He also cited "some heroic actions on the part of federal employees" that "will be told at the appropriate time."
The Federal Bureau of Investigation
Federal Bureau of Investigation
The Federal Bureau of Investigation is an agency of the United States Department of Justice that serves as both a federal criminal investigative body and an internal intelligence agency . The FBI has investigative jurisdiction over violations of more than 200 categories of federal crime...
stated that it was investigating the incident "as a criminal matter of an assault on a federal officer" and that it was not being considered terrorism at this time.
However, two members of the United States House of Representatives
United States House of Representatives
The United States House of Representatives is one of the two Houses of the United States Congress, the bicameral legislature which also includes the Senate.The composition and powers of the House are established in Article One of the Constitution...
, both of whose districts include the Austin area, made statements to the contrary. Rep. Lloyd Doggett
Lloyd Doggett
Lloyd Alton Doggett II is the U.S. Representative for , serving since 2005. He previously represented from 1995 to 2005. He is a member of the Democratic Party...
(D-Texas
Texas
Texas is the second largest U.S. state by both area and population, and the largest state by area in the contiguous United States.The name, based on the Caddo word "Tejas" meaning "friends" or "allies", was applied by the Spanish to the Caddo themselves and to the region of their settlement in...
) stated, "Like the larger-scale tragedy in Oklahoma City, this was a cowardly act of domestic terrorism." Mike McCaul (R-Texas), told a reporter that, "it sounds like it [was a terrorist attack] to me." Nihad Awad
Nihad Awad
Nihad Awad is the Executive Director of the Council on American-Islamic Relations .- Early life :Nihad Awad was born in Amman New Camp, a Palestinian refugee camp in Amman, Jordan. He studied at Second Amman Preparatory School for Boys, located at the camp and belongs to UNRWA, and at Salaheddine...
, the Executive Director of the Council on American-Islamic Relations
Council on American-Islamic Relations
The Council on American-Islamic Relations is America's largest Muslim civil liberties advocacy organization that deals with civil advocacy and promotes human rights...
(CAIR), is also asking the federal government to classify this as an act of terrorism. In a statement on February 19, he said, "Whenever an individual or group attacks civilians in order to make a political statement, that is an act of terror. Terrorism is terrorism, regardless of the faith, race or ethnicity of the perpetrator or the victims. If a Muslim had carried out the IRS attack, it would have surely been labeled an act of terrorism." Georgetown University
Georgetown University
Georgetown University is a private, Jesuit, research university whose main campus is in the Georgetown neighborhood of Washington, D.C. Founded in 1789, it is the oldest Catholic university in the United States...
Professor Bruce Hoffman
Bruce Hoffman
Bruce Hoffman is the Director of the Center for Peace and Security Studies at Georgetown University's Walsh School of Foreign Service and a specialist in the study of terrorism and counter-insurgency...
stated that for this to be considered an act of terrorism, "there has to be some political motive and it has to send a broader message that seeks some policy change. From what I've heard, that doesn't appear to be the case. It appears he was very mad at the [IRS] and this was a cathartic outburst of violence. His motivation was the key." A USA Today
USA Today
USA Today is a national American daily newspaper published by the Gannett Company. It was founded by Al Neuharth. The newspaper vies with The Wall Street Journal for the position of having the widest circulation of any newspaper in the United States, something it previously held since 2003...
headline used the term "a chilling echo of terrorism."
Citing the copy of Joseph Stack's suicide note posted online, the liberal Daily Kos
Daily Kos
Daily Kos is an American political blog that publishes news and opinions from a progressive point of view. It functions as a discussion forum and group blog for a variety of netroots activists, whose efforts are primarily directed toward influencing and strengthening the Democratic Party...
website observed that, "Obviously Stack was not a mentally healthy person, and he was embittered at capitalism, including crony capitalism, and health insurance companies and the government." They also stated that Stack could not be connected with the popular Tea Party movement
Tea Party movement
The Tea Party movement is an American populist political movement that is generally recognized as conservative and libertarian, and has sponsored protests and supported political candidates since 2009...
, but argued that the incident "should inject a bit of caution into the anti-government flame-throwers on the right." The website Ace of Spades HQ disputed any connection to the movement and additionally stated Stack was not "right wing", citing Stack's criticism of politician
Politician
A politician, political leader, or political figure is an individual who is involved in influencing public policy and decision making...
s for not doing anything about health care reform
Health care reform in the United States
Health care reform in the United States has a long history, of which the most recent results were two federal statutes enacted in 2010: the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act , signed March 23, 2010, and the Health Care and Education Reconciliation Act of 2010 , which amended the PPACA and...
.
In an interview with ABC
American Broadcasting Company
The American Broadcasting Company is an American commercial broadcasting television network. Created in 1943 from the former NBC Blue radio network, ABC is owned by The Walt Disney Company and is part of Disney-ABC Television Group. Its first broadcast on television was in 1948...
's Good Morning America
Good Morning America
Good Morning America is an American morning news and talk show that is broadcast on the ABC television network; it debuted on November 3, 1975. The weekday program airs for two hours; a third hour aired between 2007 and 2008 exclusively on ABC News Now...
, Joe Stack's adult daughter, Samantha Bell, who now lives in Norway, stated that she considered her father to be a hero, because she felt that now people might listen. While she does not agree with his specific actions involving the plane crash, she does agree with his actions about speaking out against "injustice" and "the government." Bell subsequently retracted aspects of her statement, saying her father was "not a hero" and adding, "We are mourning for Vernon Hunter."
Five days after her husband Vernon Hunter's death, Valerie Hunter filed a wrongful death lawsuit
Lawsuit
A lawsuit or "suit in law" is a civil action brought in a court of law in which a plaintiff, a party who claims to have incurred loss as a result of a defendant's actions, demands a legal or equitable remedy. The defendant is required to respond to the plaintiff's complaint...
against Sheryl Mann Stack, Andrew Joseph Stack's widow in District Court
United States district court
The United States district courts are the general trial courts of the United States federal court system. Both civil and criminal cases are filed in the district court, which is a court of law, equity, and admiralty. There is a United States bankruptcy court associated with each United States...
. The lawsuit alleges that Sheryl had a duty to "avoid a foreseeable risk of injury to others," including her late husband and failed to do so by not warning others about her late husband. The lawsuit also mentions that Stack was required by law to fly his plane at an altitude 1,000 feet above the highest obstacle. At a March 8, 2010 benefit event, Stack's widow Sheryl publicly offered condolences for the victims of the attack.
Iowa
Iowa
Iowa is a state located in the Midwestern United States, an area often referred to as the "American Heartland". It derives its name from the Ioway people, one of the many American Indian tribes that occupied the state at the time of European exploration. Iowa was a part of the French colony of New...
congressman
United States House of Representatives
The United States House of Representatives is one of the two Houses of the United States Congress, the bicameral legislature which also includes the Senate.The composition and powers of the House are established in Article One of the Constitution...
Steve King
Steve King
Steven Arnold "Steve" King is the U.S. Representative for , serving since 2003. He is a member of the Republican Party.The district is located in the western part of the state and includes Sioux City and Council Bluffs....
(R
Republican Party (United States)
The Republican Party is one of the two major contemporary political parties in the United States, along with the Democratic Party. Founded by anti-slavery expansion activists in 1854, it is often called the GOP . The party's platform generally reflects American conservatism in the U.S...
-Iowa
Iowa
Iowa is a state located in the Midwestern United States, an area often referred to as the "American Heartland". It derives its name from the Ioway people, one of the many American Indian tribes that occupied the state at the time of European exploration. Iowa was a part of the French colony of New...
) has made several statements regarding Stack including "I think if we’d abolished the IRS back when I first advocated it, he wouldn’t have a target for his airplane. And I’m still for abolishing the IRS, I’ve been for it for thirty years and I’m for a national sales tax (in its place)."
Noted libertarian socialist
Libertarian socialism
Libertarian socialism is a group of political philosophies that promote a non-hierarchical, non-bureaucratic, stateless society without private property in the means of production...
American intellectual Noam Chomsky
Noam Chomsky
Avram Noam Chomsky is an American linguist, philosopher, cognitive scientist, and activist. He is an Institute Professor and Professor in the Department of Linguistics & Philosophy at MIT, where he has worked for over 50 years. Chomsky has been described as the "father of modern linguistics" and...
cited Joe Stack's suicide letter as indicative of some of the public sentiment in the U.S., stated that several of Stack's assertions are accurate or based on real grievances, and urged people to "help" the Joseph Stacks of the world get involved in constructive popular movements instead of letting the Joseph Stacks "destroy themselves, and maybe the world,"
in order to prevent a process similar to how legitimate and valid popular grievances of the German people in the 1920s and 1930s were manipulated by the Nazis towards violence and away from constructive ends.
The Internal Revenue Service formally designates certain individuals as potentially dangerous taxpayer
Potentially dangerous taxpayer
A Potentially dangerous taxpayer is a designation assigned to taxpayers of the United States of America who have demonstrated a capacity for violence against employees of the Internal Revenue Service or other government agencies, contractors or their families...
s (PDTs). In response to an inquiry after the attack, an IRS spokesperson declined to state whether Stack had been designated as a PDT.
See also
- Tax protester (United States)Tax protester (United States)A tax protester is someone who refuses to pay a tax on constitutional or legal grounds, typically because he or she believes that the tax laws are unconstitutional or otherwise invalid...
- Internet censorship in the United StatesInternet censorship in the United StatesInternet censorship in the United States is the suppression of information published or viewed on the Internet in the United States.-Overview:...
- Big governmentBig governmentBig government is a term generally used by political conservatives, laissez-faire advocates, or libertarians to describe a government or public sector which they consider to be excessively large, corrupt and inefficient, or inappropriately involved in certain areas of public policy or the private...
External links
- "Well Mr. Big Brother IRS man... take my pound of flesh and sleep well." - Archive of Stack's suicide note from his website, Embeddedart.com