battery powered brains. an experimental surgery that can literally change people's minds. >> it felt fantastic. i didn't care what was doing it. >> is it a cure for depression? revealing investigations. fascinating characters. stories with impact. this is "cnn presents" with tonight's hosts, randi kaye and drew griffin. >> 15 years ago congress knew it had a big problem. its military housing was in a desperate state. 180,000 units around the world built cheap and now falling apart. >> facing a billion dollar repair bill, congress had a big idea. turning the housing over to private companies and let the free market do its work. >> but as cnn's debra feyerick reports, for many families living in those homes, that big idea has been a disaster. >> and the men and women who served to protect us are fighting a losing battle at home. >> reporter: when these sailors and marines left the u.s. to serve their country, no one imagined many would come home to this. so you know people who are affected in this house? turning the housing over to private companies and let the free market do its work. >> but as cnn's debra feyerick reports, for many families living in those homes, that big idea has been a disaster. >> and the men and women who served to protect us are fighting a losing battle at home. >> reporter: when these sailors and marines left the u.s. to serve their country, no one imagined many would come home to this. so you know people who are affected in this house? >> yes. >> reporter: then over in this house? >> mm-hmm. >> reporter: and that house. norfolk naval base in virginia is the largest in the world. home to the u.s. atlantic fleet. but it's facing a crisis. >> i'm in essence combatting a war on two fronts. >> i don't feel safe in these houses. i've never not felt safe in a house. >> reporter: a crisis that has turned dozens of military families, their children and pets into virtual refugees. holed up in cramped hotel rooms for weeks at a time. they call this hotel wing the mold wing. >> she was hospitalized. >> reporter: displaced families who tell us they or their kids are sick after living in rotting homes. and being exposed in some cases to unhealthy levels of mold. roughly how many times have you either been to a doctor or been to the emergency room because of your illnesses or the illnesses of your kids if you had to guess? half a dozen times? >> 50. >> yeah. >> reporter: 50? >> yeah. >> they told me it was stress. they told me it was stress and a panic attack. until they found the lesions on my brain. >> i lost all mobility on my left side in october. they thought i was having a stroke. >> reporter: although a direct link is hard to prove, symptoms described by these young women are consistent with possible effects of mold exposure. according to the centers for disease control and the world health organization. military wives who were getting sicker and sicker say their living conditions were ignored or covered up by a private management company. lincoln military housing, or lmh, is a subsidiary of one of the largest property management firms in america. after congress privatized military family housing, lincoln park nered with the navy in 2005. taking control of renovating old homes and building new ones in the norfolk area. in exchange for guaranteed rent. the navy was thrilled. >> our long-term partnership with lincoln has been extremely successful. we've been able to accomplish things in terms of providing quality homes i don't think we ever would have accomplished. >> reporter: gerald bliss runs lincoln military housing. under the terms of the contract, within a two-year period, all homes were supposed to be brought up to a suitable level. was that done, in your opinion? by "suitable" i mean all of them livable. >> yes. i believe it was, under the terms of our agreement with the navy. we have an obligation to the families. we want to provide them great housing, suitable housing, comfortable housing. >> reporter: yet military spouses we spoke with tell a very different story. >> the second story was sinking into the first. >> my house is like a mote. it lives in a pool of water. >> reporter: a story of decaying homes and well meaning but incompetent maintenance people. >> right here is my home. >> reporter: shelley federico moved into lincoln military housing october 2010. when she moved out a year later, she had filed more than two dozen complaints with lincoln maintenance related to water damage and penetration. >> they would send someone out. they say, ms. med rhee koe, no problems. we just need to caulk your window. >> reporter: shelley says she developed intense stomach and sinus problems. persistent headaches. skin lesions and chronic fatigue. doctors could find no cause. she says it clicked the day a maintenance man came to remove a section of bedroom wall. >> he started taking the insulation out of the walls, and as he was carrying it through my house there was water dripping out of the insulation that he had just gathered from the wall. as soon as he did that, i immediately started projectile vomiting. my eyes started to swell. started to get very hard for me to breathe. >> reporter: when shelley demanded a mold test, lincoln instead explained the company had decided to move shelley and her family to a new home. >> when i asked lincoln military housing, they told me that there was no need for a test. >> reporter: she says lincoln refused to consider mold as a possibility. who had it done independently? all of you? paying up to $500 each, shelley and others hired their own mold inspectors. results confirmed what they already suspected. so one of the readings was 33,000. what's a normal reading? >> zero. i was actually told by our mediator, you're very lucky that you found it when you did. if you would have continued to live this way this whole time not knowing, you would probably be dead. >> reporter: all right. this is shelley federico's house. lincoln's gerald bliss took us to see shelley's former home, which remains vacant because it's now the focus of a lawsuit. there's a smell in this house. i understand whether it's just general must. but there's a distinct -- >> yeah. that's just -- >> reporter: -- just heaviness in this house. you don't smell it? >> i do a bit. >> reporter: we asked about the high levels of mold spores in chilly's test. >> there's been three other reports that have been completed. >> reporter: what did they tell you about this house? >> they had low levels. >> reporter: lower levels than the report that i saw? >> yeah. >> reporter: but cnn reviewed two of the mold reports. both of them confirmed significant levels of mold. lincoln could not share the results of its own independent test because it's being sued by military families. lincoln knew it was inheriting hundreds of older, poorly built homes. while bliss denies a systemic mold problem, he admits maintenance fell short. >> i understand why some of the families are frustrated on this issue. i'd be frugs traited, too, with some of the things that went on. we've made mistakes and we're working through those mistakes. >> reporter: but that's not good enough for the families. lincoln is now fighting a lawsuit by shelley and others that claims the company's failure to properly maintain their homes caused them serious health problems. >> you know, we're sending our men and women to go fight for this country. we don't ask for a mansion on the hill. we just ask for a safe place to lay our head at night that's not going to make us sick and it's not going to make our family sick. that's all we ask. >> reporter: when we come back -- was lincoln trying to save costs. to cut corners. >> 100% yes. 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>> sinus infections. respiratory infections. the nausea. the vomiting. the diarrhea. >> reporter: the families we spoke to believe lincoln was avoiding what it knew to be a huge problem. >> there was a lot of mold when i first started. >> reporter: meet dinette smith. she worked ten years for the navy and was among the first team hired by lincoln when it took over military housing in 2005. in your opinion, was lincoln trying to save costs, to cut corners? >> 100% yes. they did not want to spend the money due to the units eventually were going to be torn down or they mainly concerned on 100% occupancy. >> reporter: how were they remediating the mold? >> covering it. >> reporter: how? >> they would cover it with cleaning it with bleach and then painting over it. they put a band-aid over anything the cheapest way possible to make it not visible and for a resident to come in to not say anything. >> reporter: lincoln denies smith's allegations. she was fired for overspending on housing maintenance. fast-forward to today. with families getting mysteriously sick and lincoln denying a problem. families desperately turn to the navy for help. >> she was actually there with me that day. >> it's out of our hands. >> it's out of our hands. there's nothing we can do. i found a doctor that could help us. you know what? you see those helicopters over there? that's what i do. i don't do anything more than that. sir, can you help us? i'll pass the information along. >> reporter: that man is rear admiral tim alexander whose housing staff directs service members to lincoln housing. >> we're there to support our families and to ensure that they are being treated properly. >> reporter: from the bottom of your heart, do you believe that the navy acted that way? because a lot of families would say otherwise. >> i do believe that in every instance where we were informed that they had a problem with their landlord, we have fully engaged on their behalf, yes. >> reporter: the navy's housing crisis came to a boil in december when a local tv reporter contacted by marine wife shelley federico started looking into the allegations. >> after shelley's story spread through the neighborhood, other navy families started coming forward, telling news channel 3 their stories. >> reporter: the floodgates opened. navy and marine wives who had never met before came out by the dozens. at an emergency town hall meeting, u.s. senator mark warner, who himself has a daughter with asthma, listened in disbelief. >> it's been 20 years in business. this is not a way to run a business. >> what struck me were here were these navy spouses with their husbands deployed defending our country. and they were living in substandard housing. i mean, this is not how we should be treating the families of the guys who are defending our country. >> reporter: when lincoln tried to defend itself with its own test results suggesting no mold was present, senator mark warner demanded lincoln fire its mold inspectors. telling the navy to step in and do its job, overseeing its public/private partnership with lincoln. many of the families feel the navy dropped the ball when it came to oversight. do you think that's a fair description. >> i think the navy, if they didn't drop the ball, they took their eye off the ball. >> reporter: lincoln is now doing what desperate families for months have been asking. they're finally offering free mold tests for inwho wants one. and, if necessary, remediating the mold. lincoln and the navy are not doing this out of the goodness of their heart. they're doing it because they got caught. >> they got caught. >> reporter: lincoln says it has fired ten employees. hired a community lee yay zon. and is reviewing its 4,400 homes. lincoln representatives were denying there was a problem. the navy was denying there was a problem. now all of the sudden there's been a 180-degree reversal. and you guys are now acting on it. >> well, we've made mistakes. and we're not happy about what happened here. and i think we've -- we've recognized that. >> reporter: it's no secret that government contracts are lucrative contracts. but devil's advocate, why should anyone give you any more money given what has happened with these families? >> well, we have to -- we have to prove ourselves again. and we have to compete for the families, their rental dollars. >> reporter: the navy is now promising to live up to its end of the deal. >> one of our lessons learned has been in this particular partnership and for the time being that we need to increase the amount of oversight that we provide sort of at the deck plate level. >> that's what they found in my bathroom. >> reporter: you're asking these families who already have enough going on to trust lincoln and to trust you, and a lot of families are saying, huh-uh. >> well, certainly we want to restore that trust across the board. and we will do that one family at a time. >> reporter: but for those who are sick and feel they were lied to, that could take a very long time. >> these things should have been condemned a long time ago. and they weren't. i don't want to move back into that house. i don't care what they've done to that house. they can rip out every single wall. they can rip up every piece of carpeting. it's not going to be safe. >> to date, lincoln military housing has inspected nearly all of its 4,400 homes. so far, they say 68 homes have required full remediation. but despite their track record, the company gets to keep that lucrative navy contract for the next 40 years. up next, he left behind an anger-filled manifesto. and a wife who says she still loves him. in an exclusive interview, the widow of a man with a vendetta against the irs tells her story. i love that my daughter's part fish. but when she got asthma, all i could do was worry ! specialists, lots of doctors, lots of advice... and my hands were full. i couldn't sort through it all. with unitedhealthcare, it's different. we have access to great specialists, and our pediatrician gets all the information. everyone works as a team. and i only need to talk to one person about her care. we're more than 78,000 people looking out for 70 million americans. that's health in numbers. unitedhealthcare. two years ago, a man named joe stack crashed his plane into the office building that housed the irs in austin, texas. before flying on his deadly mission, he burned down his own home, leaving behind a wife and stepdaughter who had fled in fear to a hotel the night before. he also left a manifesto online in which he angrily railed against the irs. what really happened? and who was joe stack? the woman who knew him best, his wife sheryl, has not spoken about the tragedy until now. kyra phillips has her story of faith and fury. ♪ >> i still love joe. i don't think that joe was a bad person. >> reporter: it took some time for sheryl stack to get to this point. for two years, she has struggled, but has found comfort in her music and her faith. >> i have been more sad than mad. suicide is so painful on so many different levels, and then you add the public factor, the public suicide. ♪ >> reporter: it was february 18th, 2010. an angry and violent joe stack set his family's house on fire, then drove here to the georgetown municipal airport, boarded his single engine plane. >> georgetown tower, dakota 2889 ready for departure. >> reporter: and was cleared for takeoff. >> what's your direction of flight, sir? >> 89 delta going southbound, sir. >> reporter: at 9:49 a.m. joe stack was headed for his final flight. joe stack knew exactly where he was going. the echelon building in austin. which housed the irs. >> from austin, texas, a single engine aircraft has crashed into a seven-story building. >> it was like a fire bomb. people let out screams all around me. a few people were crying. >> reporter: stack slammed his plane between the first and second floors of the building. it exploded on impact. one man was killed. vernon hunter, an irs employee. >> the country, the city, the region in danger. >> reporter: immediately, there were fears that this was an act of terrorism. but it wasn't. it was simply one man's grudge against the irs. and then came the manifesto. before stack would die by suicide, the 53-year-old software engineer would leave behind a rambling diatribe online. where he railed against the government in excruciaing detail. i choose to not keep looking over my shoulder at big brother while he strips my carcass, stack wrote. i choose not to ignore what is going on all around me. i have just had enough. ♪ >> reporter: today, that manifesto still haunts sheryl stack. what do you say to people that may be listening to you and thinking, how could she not know about this rage, about this manifesto, about this anger? >> well, i knew that he was angry. but i thought he was angry at us. you know? about the irs, i didn't know that he was violent. how could i possibly know he would do a thing like that? >> reporter: sheryl met joseph andrew stack through a mutual friend in 2005. both loved music. sheryl played piano. joe played bass guitar. two years later in a small ceremony in austin, they married. joining them was sheryl's 12-year-old daughter, margo. so what made you fall in love with joe? >> well, he was really sweet and funny and smart. >> reporter: so you both loved music? >> we both loved music. and he also was a private pilot. and he had his own plane. >> reporter: did he ever talk about how he was angry with the government, angry with the irs? >> when we were dating, he did talk about the irs. and he didn't seem so angry. he just didn't like them. >> reporter: what would he say? >> you know, that he thought they were crooks, you know. that they were above the law. >> reporter: but, actually, joe's emotions ran much deeper. in the '80s while living in california, he was part of the anti-tax movement. even forming his own tax exempt home church. his run-ins with the irs continued for decades. then in late 2008, joe and sheryl got audited. and once again, joe was in another battle with the irs. a battle he wasn't going to lose. joe stack started to document what would soon become his suicide mission. he wrote, "desperate times call for desperate measures." and "violence not only is the answer, it is the only answer." >> he said they're never going to leave me alone. >> reporter: when do you think he was writing this manifesto? >> one day he was writing. whenever i would walk into the room where he was writing, he'd just turn his attention to me. >> reporter: so when you walked in, he closed the computer. he had something he didn't want you to see. >> but i didn't know what it was. and so a few days before that horrible day when everything -- i don't know what to call that day. i don't know what to call that day. but a few days before that, he was writing, and i walked in. i said, honey, what are you writing? are you writing a journal? are you keeping a journal? and he said, "something lik