To some, suicide attack on IRS made pilot a hero

The Associated Press

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 yesterday.

Stack, 53, left behind a 3,000-word screed in which he ranted about his financial reverses, his difficulty finding work and his hatred of big business. Mostly, though, he focused on his clashes with the IRS.

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

Stack's adult daughter, Samantha Dawn Bell, asked whether she considered her father a hero, said during a telephone interview broadcast yesterday 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.

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. Said Hunter's son, Ken Hunter, on "Good Morning America": "My dad Vernon did two tours of duty in Vietnam. My dad's a hero."