SILVER SPRING, Md. – Police had been negotiating with James Lee for several hours and intended to keep him talking for as long as it took to safely resolve the standoff at the Discovery Channel’s headquarters.

Inside the lobby, Lee’s three hostages had no intention of waiting.

As the two Discovery employees and a security guard got ready to make a break for it, officers moving in on Lee heard him shout and then a “pop” that they thought might have been gunfire or a homemade bomb detonating.

So they stepped out from behind a wall and shot him dead, ending the drama that unfolded Wednesday at the cable network’s complex just north of Washington.

It turned out that Lee was armed with starter pistols, police said Thursday as they revealed new details about the culmination of Lee’s yearslong crusade against the Discovery networks, which he faulted in fanatical Web posts for offering programming that promoted overpopulation.

But Lee, 43, was also carrying homemade pipe bombs, one of which went off when he was shot. Authorities found and detonated four more devices Thursday at a home about 3 miles north of the Discovery building where Lee had stayed.

Authorities had been negotiating for roughly four hours Wednesday afternoon when the tactical team opened fire.

“For most of the time, the hostages were laying on the ground, and he didn’t engage them much other than saying on the phone, ‘I don’t care about these people,’ ” Montgomery County Police Chief Thomas Manger said Thursday.

“I believe he was not intending to come out of there alive. ... He told us many times over the course of hours that he was ready to die.”

None of the hostages or any of the 1,900 other people who work at Discovery Communications Inc.’s building was hurt.

Lee, who was periodically homeless, was charged with disorderly conduct in February 2008 after he staged a “Save the Planet” protest outside the Discovery building.

He threw fistfuls of cash in the air and paid homeless people to carry signs condemning the network. Police found him with a duffel bag stuffed with more than $20,000, according to court records.

Acting as his own lawyer during the trial, he described himself as a peace activist who wanted “to save the planet, of course.”

He served two weeks in jail and was ordered to stay 500 feet away from Discovery headquarters as part of his probation, which ended two weeks ago.

Lee’s first known run-in with the law came in 2003 in San Diego, where he was convicted in federal court of smuggling aliens into the U.S. He wrote a forlorn letter to the judge expressing his unhappiness.

“After 36 years of my life, I have absolutely nothing to show for it,” Lee wrote. “As for family, all I can say is that I avoid them to preserve my sanity. I think that they are better off without me in their lives.”

He went on to write: “I don’t know if my life will end with a happy ending, but all I ask is for an ending that is not in prison.”

In court and on his website, he had demanded an end to Discovery Communications’ shows such as TLC’s “Kate Plus 8” and “19 Kids and Counting.” He said the network should instead air “programs encouraging human sterilization and infertility.”