Breaking News: Gunman Takes Hostages in Maryland

By Liz Robbins and Brian Stelter, The New York Times

A gunman who may have had explosive devices took a small number of hostages Wednesday at the headquarters of the Discovery Channel in Silver Spring, Md., and the police were negotiating with the man, the authorities said.

“We’re trying to get him to release the hostages and surrender peacefully,” the Montgomery County police chief, J. Thomas Manger, told reporters at an afternoon briefing near the building.

The chief said he believed that most of the 1,900 employees had been safely evacuated from the building, but that “a small number of hostages are with the suspect” on the first floor.

Cpl. Dan Friz of the county police said that Discovery Communications had identified the man as James J. Lee, although the police did not immediately confirm that information.

Capt. Paul Starks of the county police department said that the gunman’s “concerns are with the Discovery corporation right now.”

He said that the police have been in contact with the suspect by telephone.

The hostage situation began at 1 p.m., according to Chief Manger, when a man entered the Discovery building through the main entrance.

“He came in and was wearing metallic canister devices on his front and back,” the chief said. “He also pulled a handgun out and was waving a handgun. The man told everyone to just ‘stay still,’ and he has remained on the first floor area of the Discovery building.”

A Web site owned by Mr. Lee, SaveThePlanetProtest.com, was established in January 2008, according to domain name records, and it asserts that Discovery’s programming was hurting the environment rather than helping.

In early August the home page of the site was listed as being “under construction.” Sometime since then, it was put back online with a list of demands. The author of the Web site called for Discovery to show programs about how to save the planet by decreasing the human population.

“Saving the Planet means saving what’s left of the non-human Wildlife by decreasing the Human population,” the Web site stated. “That means stopping the human race from breeding any more disgusting human babies!”

A Discovery employee who now works at the company’s New York office, but was based in Silver Spring for many years, said the man behind the SaveThePlanetProtest.com Web site “used to picket” outside the headquarters on a regular basis.

“I saw him at least once a month,” the employee said on Wednesday. “He would pay homeless people to help hold his placard.”

The employee said the man’s complaints on the placards were similar in tone to the complaints expressed on his Web site. The employee spoke on condition of anonymity because of the ongoing hostage situation.

Discovery Communications is one of the foremost providers of environmental and educational television programming. It operates the Discovery Channel, Animal Planet, TLC, and a number of other cable channels.

Its headquarters building, completed in 2003, was a vital part of the redevelopment of downtown Silver Spring.