Friends Shocked by Pilot’s Anti-IRS Fervor

Joe Stack’s 3,000-word manifesto/suicide letter makes it clear he was deeply angry about the tax code before he flew his plane into an Austin building containing IRS offices. But his friends, for the most part, had no idea of his passion, according to the Associated Press. They describe him as a “well adjusted” country rock musician in Austin’s music scene who didn’t talk politics. ''I read the letter that he wrote. It sounded like his voice but the things he said I had never heard him say,'' the wife of a band-mate said. She added that Stack had attended a school for orphaned boys in Pennsylvania and seemed to have coped well. ''I don't know what to base his madness on… It must have been lurking beneath the surface,'' a band-mate said. He also said Stack didn’t drink or smoke, was intelligent and cared about “all the normal stuff people are concerned about.” He recently asked friends to attend his wife’s piano recital. The Red Cross says Stack’s family is “remarkably calm” but “in need of some mental health assistance.”