‘Discipline’ Saved Lives at Discovery HQ

Hostage Incident Forces Programmer to Evacuate Home Base in Maryland; Police Shoot and Kill Gunman

By Marisa Guthrie -- Multichannel News, 9/6/2010 12:01:00 AM

One day after a gunman terrorized employees at Discovery Communications headquarters in Silver Spring, Md., staffers were welcomed back to work last Thursday morning (Sept. 2) by CEO David Zaslav, chief operating officer Peter Ligouri and founder and chairman John Hendricks.

They greeted employees returning to work through the glass-wal led lobby, the very place where a gunman, explosives strapped to his body, held three employees hostage for nearly four hours until police officers shot and killed the man.

Police swept the building for additional explosives Wednesday night, and David Leavy, Discovery Communications executive vice president of communicat ions and corporate affairs, said the company is reviewing security procedures.

He said, though, that in this case “security worked,” as the gunman did not make it past guards. The hostages — three men, including one security guard — were taken in the building’s lobby, which is open to the public.

One of the hostages, Jim McNulty, posted a blog on the company’s website thanking Montgomery County police for “helping to get me and my fellow hostages out safely.”

“I especially want to thank Discovery for their support,” he wrote, adding that he would not talk about his ordeal in detail as the police investigation is ongoing.

Leavy said the company followed very specific evacuation procedures and worked with authorities to ensure that employees and the children at the day care center in the building were quickly and safely evacuated.

“This is a very organized and disciplined company,” he said. “And in this situation, that discipline saved lives.”

Police identified the gunman as James J. Lee, a radical environmentalist who had staged at least one demonstration outside Discovery headquarters in 2008 for what he believed was the network’s dearth of programming about environmental dangers, including global warming and overpopulation.

During that protest, he paid homeless people to carry signs and threw wads of cash into the air. News footage of that event — replayed by ABC affiliate WJLA in Silver Spring — shows throngs of people scrambling for the money. Lee was charged with disorderly conduct for that incident and ordered to stay 500 feet away from Discovery headquarters as part of his probation, which ended recently.

In court and on his website, Lee inveighed against Discovery content including multiple-birth programs Kate Plus 8 and 19 Kids and Counting, which air on TLC. Lee wanted the company to air “programs encouraging human sterilization and infertility.”

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Marisa Guthrie is programming editor of Broadcasting & Cable.