Man targets IRS offices in plane attack

February 19, 2010 at 12:00a.m.

combined dispatches

AUSTIN, Texas — In a rambling, obscenity-laced suicide note posted online, the pilot accused of flying his plane into an Austin office building Thursday takes aim at the Internal Revenue Service, religion, big business and even former President George W. Bush.

A man identified as Joe Stack, 53, of Austin flew his small, single- engine airplane from a Georgetown, Texas, airport and then crashed it into an office complex in northwest Austin about 25 miles away, reports said. Officials also believe he set his own house ablaze.

“I remember reading about the stock market crash before the ‘great’ depression and how there were wealthy bankers and businessmen jumping out of windows when they realized they screwed up and lost everything,” according to the online note, dated Feb. 18, 2010, and signed “Joe Stack, [1956-2010].”

“Isn’t it ironic how far we’ve come in 60 years in this country that they now know how to fix that little economic problem; they just steal from the middle class [who doesn’t have any say in it, elections are a joke] to cover their a---- and it’s ‘business- as-usual.’

“Now when the wealthy f--- up, the poor get to die for the mistakes ... isn’t that a clever, tidy solution.”

Stack, who is presumed dead, described himself in the note as a software engineer and blamed the government, the IRS and accountants for his business problems.

Violence, he wrote, “not only is the answer, it is the only answer.”

The note ends: “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.”

At least two people were taken to the hospital from the burning building, and emergency crews found two bodies in the wreckage by late Thursday.

Austin Fire Department Battalion Chief Palmer Buck said late Thursday that authorities “have now accounted for everybody,” but declined to discuss the identities of those found.

Thick black and gray smoke was billowing out of the second and third stories of the building Thursday as fire crews using ladder trucks and hoses battled the fire. Dozens of windows were blown out of the hulking, black building, and motorists traveling on a nearby highway paused to look.

Quoting a federal official, CNN reported that the pilot had torched his home before taking off in the plane. Public records show the home was located in the 1800 block of Dapplegrey Lane.

A federal official said two F-16 fighter jets were launched as a precaution after the crash, though a spokesman for the Department of Homeland Security said there is no reason to believe that terrorism was involved.