In the confusing early stages of the hostage crisis at Discovery Channel headquarters yesterday, NBC News called the building, and picking up on the other end was none other than James Lee, the gunman himself. NBC News producer Rob Rivas spoke to Lee for about ten minutes, during which time Lee told him, “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, it will fuckin’ explode.”
This, apparently, had been a project of Lee’s for quite some time (storming the Discovery Channel and taking hostages isn’t something you do on a whim), as he said he’d been making the bombs for “around three weeks or a month. I did a lot of research and experiments.” And in a twist of irony, some of that research consisted of simply watching the Discovery Channel’s own programming.
Asked how he had learned to make a bomb, the man said that he knew how to weld and read widely but that he also picked up pointers from the TV show “Mythbusters.”
It’s not Mythbusters’ fault. They do say “Don’t try this at home.”
