Gunman handed NBC an exclusive and a quandary

The oversized U.S. Postal Service envelope was addressed simply to “NBC,” and might have been overlooked in the jumble of mail flooding into the television network’s Rockefeller Center headquarters Wednesday if a sharp-eyed mail carrier hadn’t noticed the return address: “Blacksburg, Va.” The sender: “Ishmael.”

Those clues were enough to alarm the Postal Service employee, who flagged the mailroom when he dropped it off about 11 a.m. NBC security officials were immediately called to examine the package.

Inside, they found a lengthy document featuring more than 40 photos of Seung-hui Cho with handguns and other weapons, accompanied by a rambling, 1,800-word, profanity-laced diatribe. A separate DVD contained two dozen Quicktime videos of the Virginia Tech senior raging about the wealthy and insisting that he was pushed to violence.

“You forced me into a corner and gave me only one option,” Cho said in one of the videos in which he compared himself to Jesus and the two teenage killers at Columbine High School.

The “multimedia manifesto,” as it was dubbed by network anchor Brian Williams, offered the first extensive window on the gunman responsible for the worst school shooting in U.S. history -- and handed NBC a major exclusive on a story that has dominated the news all week.

The unforeseen bonanza of information forced the network to juggle its urge to be first with the legal and ethical implications of broadcasting the materials. Could airing the materials compromise the investigation or glorify Cho’s actions?

“This is very difficult,” said Steve Capus, president of the news division. “We’re all looking for unique angles. You just hope all of your training as journalists and as good citizens comes to bear.”

Capus said the network immediately notified law enforcement officials about the package and delayed reporting about it until investigators announced its existence.

Only then, after extensive internal deliberations with Williams, standards officials and other news executives, did he decide to air excerpts of Cho’s rantings, first broadcast on “NBC Nightly News” on Wednesday evening.

“Everybody wanted to know, ‘Why did he do this, why carry out such a hateful act,’ ” Capus said. “I think this is as close as we will ever come to understanding, and for that reason we needed to release some of this.”

But NBC’s decision triggered an angry backlash from viewers. Within a few hours, MSNBC.com message boards filled with postings denouncing the decision, many angrily accusing the network of exploiting the materials and potentially inspiring copycats. Some vowed never to watch again.

NBC spokeswoman Allison Gollust said the network “gave careful consideration to what we would air, and have only shown a small fraction of what we received.”

She added that news executives decided Wednesday night to limit the use of the video to no more than 10% of airtime, or no more than six minutes per hour on MSNBC.

Capus learned of the package about noon, when an NBC security official pulled him out of an editorial meeting and told him, “I’ve got something you need to see.”

The security department handed him a copy of the materials (they said they had duplicated the documents and DVD to keep from compromising the originals), and when Capus began examining them, “It just took my breath away. I couldn’t quite believe it.”

The package had been postmarked at 9:01 a.m. EDT Monday, shortly before Cho gunned down 30 people in Norris Hall. It was sent through overnight mail, but because it had the wrong ZIP Code it did not arrive until Wednesday morning.

Capus immediately called Pete Williams, NBC’s Justice Department correspondent, who was in Washington covering the Supreme Court’s decision to uphold a ban limiting abortions. They quickly decided he should hand that story off to another reporter and come to New York. Williams reached out to his contacts at the FBI, who in turn alerted the Virginia State Police.

Local FBI agents arrived at Rockefeller Center soon afterward to pick up the original documents, while Capus spent most of the afternoon in discussions with Virginia police officials, who initially asked him to delay reporting on the package until they had a chance to examine the materials.

“I thought that was a reasonable request,” the news president said.

Shortly after 4 p.m. EDT, Col. Steven Flaherty, superintendent of the Virginia State Police, broke the news about the package at a news conference in Virginia, praising NBC for handling the situation “with dignity.”

About the same time, MSNBC, NBC’s cable channel, began touting the existence of materials, with anchors repeatedly noting their network’s role in the story.

They reminded viewers that NBC would broadcast excerpts on the evening news and, minutes before, MSNBC.com showed the first image of the gun-toting student.

Still, some raised questions.

“Is this ethical?” MSNBC’s Tucker Carlson asked former FBI profiler Clint Van Zandt.

The MSNBC analyst said that although he was contributing to the network’s reporting on the materials, he nevertheless felt uncomfortable with the decision to put Cho’s diatribes on air.

“This is what this guy wants,” Van Zandt said. “He wants to be able to reach his hand out of the grave and grab us by the throat and make us listen to him one more time.”

On “NBC Nightly News,” Williams assured viewers, “We are sensitive to how all of this will be seen by those affected.”

He later added, “We’re working with law enforcement on some of this because we don’t want to create any more heroes or martyrs from this.”

Before signing off, Williams noted that NBC would air more of the materials Thursday morning on “Today.”

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matea.gold@latimes.com