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.
