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NBC News Producer Talked To Discovery Gunman During Standoff

Network plays excerpts from call after crisis is resolved

By Marisa Guthrie -- Broadcasting & Cable, 9/1/2010 6:51:55 PM

Employees at Discovery Communications headquarters in Silver Spring, MD are now safe from the gunman that terrorized them Wednesday, prompting a four-hour standoff that ended with police shooting and killing the suspect, James J. Lee. But the drama continued to unfold on television as NBC News revealed that one of its producers had actually been on the phone with Lee during the standoff.

NBC News executives decided not to make the call public until after the situation had been resolved. The NBC News producer called Discovery Communications headquarters to investigate early reports of the hostage situation and got a man who identified himself as James Lee. The network alerted authorities.

Excerpts from that call (see below), which lasted about ten minutes, were played on MSNBC and NBC's Nightly News with Brian Williams.

Lee: I have a gun and I have a bomb. I have several bombs strapped to my body ready to go off I have a device that if I drop it, if I drop it, it will f**k'n explode.

NBC News Producer: So how long have you been working on this particular bomb?

Lee: Three weeks around, 3 weeks or a month?

NBC News Producer: 3 weeks?

Lee: I did a lot of research. I had to experiment.

NBC News Producer: And how many bombs again do you have

Lee: I have several.

NBC News Producer: Do you have a gun?

Lee: I have a gun and I have a bomb. I have several bombs strapped to my body ready to go off.

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• That's just great[?] that this producer was able to get this psycopath on the phone and NBC was "caring" enough to hold this info till the situation met its resolution. What if this ambitious producer somehow hastened this nutty guy to resolve things differently? As in -- god forbid -- shoot his hostages before the sniper got to him? Isn't it possible that this conversation could have influenced the less than full deck mind of this gunman? Was that a good move by NBC News and their producer to go after the story in this manner while the story was still playing out? I think it's a disgrace what NBC did.

  
  Michael Schwartz - 9/5/2010 4:23:16 PM EDT
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