(At the time, DisasterMan worked close enough to Discovery HQ to see the siege from his office window.)The incident:
- His demands
- Audio recordings: 911 calls and police radio communications
- Pictures: View from a neighboring building
- Police were willing to wait, but hostages made a break for it and forced their hand.
- His gun was a starter pistol, but the bombs were real and more were in his home.
- Did you know?: In Montgomery County, MD, all police uses of deadly force automatically go to a grand jury.
- Arguing with anti-birth-control protestors about overpopulation [Video]
- Attending an anti-war rally with a sign saying: "The Hell with the troops. Disarm them and make them clean up depleted uranium.” [Video]
- His 2008 protests at Discovery
- In his own words
- Hiring the homeless to be bogus protestors
- Throwing money in the air [Video]
- Arrest for disorderly conduct and sentencing
- Irony: He got bomb-making tips from a Discovery program
- Convicted of smuggling an illegal immigrant -- despite condemning them in his recent manifesto
The Washington Post says news of the event -- including a picture of the gunman in Discovery's courtyard -- went out over Twitter a little after 1 pm. The official warning, however, didn't go out until 2 pm. Seems to be par for the course -- except maybe with Congress, where they got p.o.-ed about that kind of delay when DisasterMan was working there. The Post probably heard about it first, however. By coincidence, a reporter was interviewing a Discovery employee on the phone when the incident started.
Lee's 2008 Protests at DiscoveryIn a post on a discussion forum, Lee announced plans to protest at Discovery in February 2008. This led to a spirited discussion. Lee said:
If NO ONE agrees with me, I'll be standing there all alone like a fool and then I'll leave and you'll not hear from me again. The public will have spoken that they are happy with the Discovery Channel and that's IT.When he held the protest, he claimed he wasn't alone, but admitted only “a couple” of others showed. He said, “I am seriously bummed at the turnout.”
In later days, he had more fellow protestors -- but it turned out they were just homeless people he'd paid to join him. He later admitted this, but said “What's wrong with paying the homeless to protest?”During one protest, he threw $20,000 in cash into the air, sparking a mass scramble. [Video] Police charged him with littering and disorderly conduct. He was jailed for two weeks, and according to his description, they threw him in “the nuthouse" for four days. He also said that afterward, they “threw” him in a homeless shelter.
He was convicted of disorderly conduct (but not littering) and sentenced to probation. He also was ordered to stay at least 500 feet away from the Discovery building. Here's more from the forum about his reasons for the protests:
“The Discovery Channel produces a lot of shows about saving the planet that all have one thing in common: They don’t work. Why don’t they have REAL shows about SAVING THE PLANET? Have you ever noticed the crap they have on their network about just about everything else but that? They glorify fishermen who are overfishing the planet, they glorify Weapons of Mass Destruction. They highlight shows about people who build pollution machines and other environmentally harmful practices. What’s next? Whaling the Planet with Modern Whalers???
“If their ‘environmental’ shows are actually working, then why is the news about the environment getting worse? It should be getting better if they were doing their job and we should be seeing that reflected on the nightly news."
