Numerous NBC executives had been involved in the process, Capus said, including the president of the company, Jeff Zucker, and the head of its standards division, David McCormick. Along with the management and many of the staff members of the news division they had weighed all the factors before deciding how to proceed, Capus said.

“It’s not every day we get a story like this,” Capus said. “We went over it for seven and a half hours. We didn’t rush it on the air. We weren’t promoting it. We weren’t trumpeting it all day. It was extraordinary, and that’s how we treated it.”

One law enforcement official said that the FBI had not publicly taken issue with NBC’s decision to broadcast the material because it was not the agency’s place. “It was their property, and it was sent to them,” the official said, referring to NBC. “And they’re in the news business.”

FBI agents sought to determine whether the package contained material beyond what might have been recovered in Virginia. Capus said the network had expected some of the criticism heard yesterday from family members and friends of the victims — in one example several family members canceled an appearance on Today to protest the network’s use of the material.