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This is getting to be old news now, but I suppose it makes sense that if you want to pull some spidey activist political propaganda spiel on the masses you would use a building like the NY Times midtown skyscraper to do it. Not just because building is a ladder just daring you to scale it, but because it’s bringing the fight right to the media. It’s like a guerilla press conference.

Even though it makes sense it is kind of ridiculous that 3 people have now climbed the building in a little over a month. Isn’t there another building worth climbing? Just because this one is easy, doesn’t make it the only building out there. What about the poor Daily News and Post, they have to be feeling left out of all the fun.

After the French Spiderman and his copycat climber, the latest gymnast is author David Malone. Climbing only about 5 stories up Malone slapped posters and unfurled a banner promoting his new book “Bin Ladens Plan” showing Bin Laden controlling a marionette style Bush. The best part of the story is that it was reported Malone was using his cell phone while climbing. Seriously man, the text message can wait!

Read the NY Times article after the jump.

The New York Times Company is preparing to remove some of the distinctive ceramic rods that sheathe its one-year-old building in Midtown Manhattan, after three men have used the rods to scale the skyscraper over the last five weeks, a law enforcement official said on Wednesday.

The third climber scaled the face of the building in the predawn darkness early Wednesday. After unfurling a banner about Al Qaeda and staying on the building for about four hours, the man surrendered to police officers and was arrested around 5:20 a.m.

Unlike the two previous climbers, this one — identified later as David Malone, a 29-year-old activist from West Hartford, Conn., who studies Al Qaeda — did not attempt to make his way to the roof. Instead, he unfurled a banner around the fifth floor of the 52-story building, before climbing a few more stories. Several hours elapsed during which the police appeared to alternate between trying to go after the man and waiting for him to surrender.

Mr. Malone was taken out of the building’s West 40th Street entrance in handcuffs at 5:39 a.m. and placed in an ambulance. He was taken to St. Vincent’s Hospital in Manhattan and then to the Midtown South Precinct, where he was charged with reckless endangerment in the first degree; criminal mischief by intent to damage property; making graffiti; criminal trespass in the third degree; and disorderly conduct by creating a dangerous act.

Mr. Malone, who grew up on Bishop Road in West Hartford, a middle-class suburb of the Connecticut capital, played basketball at the Kingswood-Oxford School, a private high school where he graduated in 1997, according to local news reports.

The police received a call at 1:23 a.m. Wednesday alerting them that there was a person scaling the skyscraper, at 620 Eighth Avenue, between 40th and 41st Streets. The authorities closed off Eighth Avenue between 40th and 42nd Streets to traffic, as well as West 41st Street between Seventh and Eighth Avenues, diverting vehicles onto other streets. Sidewalks below the Times building were closed to pedestrians.

Police officers tried to catch the climber by cutting through a window on the fifth floor of the building, but after having briefly rested at that level, he had already climbed past them.

The climbing episodes have at this point become something of an embarrassment for The Times. On June 5, two men scaled the building, hours apart, reaching the roof before being arrested. The first was Alain Robert, a 45-year-old French stuntman known for climbing tall buildings; the second was Renaldo Clarke, 32, of Brooklyn, who said he wanted to draw attention to the problem of malaria.

At the time, officials at The Times said they would tighten security and take other precautions to prevent anyone from climbing up the building again.

Asked whether those measures were effective, Catherine J. Mathis, a spokeswoman for The Times, said, “While the steps we took were worthwhile, we believe other measures are needed.”

She added, “We are exploring additional measures, some temporary and some permanent, to prevent a recurrence but are not going to discuss the specific changes under consideration.”

Paul J. Browne, the Police Department’s chief spokesman, said, “We have increased our presence in the immediate aftermath of this latest climb and I understand that the Times is taking additional measures to discourage or defeat further attempts to gain access to the ceramic ladder.”

A law enforcement official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said that The Times was looking to remove about 9 feet of the ceramic rods from the bottom of the curtain-like screen that encases the building. The official also said that The Times had indeed increased security coverage of the building after the June 5 climbs, but that the level of security coverage had recently been reduced, for reasons that were not immediately clear. Finally, the official said it appeared that Mr. Malone had breached one of plywood barriers that had been erected after the June 5 climbs to deter similar acts.

The Daily News reported on its Web site early Wednesday morning that it had received a call from the latest climber and that he had identified himself as David Malone, 29, of Connecticut, who had dropped out of the University of Michigan to study Al Qaeda.

According to the police, Mr. Malone spoke with Jill Coffey, a night editor at The Daily News, after climbing to the 10th floor, where he sat on a ledge for about two hours.

Meanwhile, officers from the Emergency Service Unit, the Hostage Negotiation Team and other units, upon learning of the phone call, tried to persuade Mr. Malone to come down.

“We wanted him to come down to the fifth floor and we persuaded him to do so by telling him he could talk in person with Coffey there and that apparently worked, because he came down to the fifth floor and he talked to Coffey about his bin Laden plan,” said Paul J. Browne, a police spokesman.

What appears to be Mr. Malone’s Web site, called Bin Laden’s Plan, states that Mr. Malone has been “independently researching bin Laden and publicly advocating the aggressive isolation and destruction of Al Qaeda.” The site goes on to claim that Mr. Malone “has successfully predicted some of the major events of bin Laden’s war” and is now trying to warn of efforts by the terrorist network to goad the United States to invade Pakistan and Iran. (Mr. Malone did not immediately respond to an e-mail message from The Times, sent while he was still on the building, requesting an interview.)

Witnesses said the climber began his ascent near the northern entrance to the building, on West 41st Street, and made his way toward the western entrance, which is on Eighth Avenue, opposite from the Port Authority Bus Terminal.

“I thought he was a worker,” said Michael Pabon, 32, who was outside the bus terminal when he saw the man begin to scale the building. “He turned up to the letter ‘H’ and climbed above it,” Mr. Pabon said, referring to the letter H in the “The” of the New York Times logo, which is made up of giant black letters affixed to the ceramic rods on the Eighth Avenue side of the building.

It was above the “T” in “The” that the climber hung a white banner with red fliers stuck to it. The banner referenced Mr. Malone’s Web site about Mr. bin Laden. Some of the red fliers were also stuck to the windows of various floors in the building as the climber went up.

Witnesses said the climber was using his cellphone repeatedly during his ascent. “He’s some kind of professional,” Mr. Pabon said. “You could see he knows what he’s doing.”

After reaching the 11th floor, Mr. Malone faced out toward the street and talked on his cellphone for several minutes. He then descended to a spot between the 9th and 10th floors. Police officers on the fifth floor had breached a floor-to-ceiling window and some were outfitted with climbing cables and hard hats. A large inflatable cushion had been placed on the sidewalk in front of the main entrance, presumably to save the man if he jumped.

The Times building was designed by the architect Renzo Piano and opened last year. Both Mr. Robert and the second climber also scaled the building using the horizontal ceramic rods that sheath the exterior — and are one of the building’s most distinctive features. The rods are intended to allow sunlight while keeping out heat, helping the building use energy more efficiently.

There is a long history of attention-grabbing stunts at New York skyscrapers. The French stunt artist Philippe Petit walked along a high wire strung between the twin towers of the World Trade Center in 1974, a feat that is the subject of a documentary, “Man on Wire.” In 1977, the mountain climber George H. Willig scaled the south tower of the trade center.

In 2006, another stuntman, Jeb Corliss, was arrested after trying to jump off the observation deck of the Empire State Building.

Prosecuting the stuntmen has sometimes proved difficult.

In the most recent cases, Mr. Robert, who climbed the Times building on June 5, faced misdemeanor counts of reckless endangerment, trespassing and graffiti. But on June 12 a grand jury decided to dismiss those charges, though it did allow Manhattan prosecutors to proceed with two counts of disorderly conduct against Mr. Robert. Lawyers for Mr. Clarke, who faced the same charges as Mr. Robert, said they hoped that he, too, would face only disorderly conduct charges.

On June 26, City Council members introduced a bill that would explicitly make it illegal to scale or jump from a building 25 feet or taller.

Councilman Peter F. Vallone Jr., a Queens Democrat and former prosecutor who sponsored the bill, said in a statement:

We need to deter more copy cats, otherwise New York will become a Disneyland for daredevils. Soon anyone selling their book or ginsu knives will be scaling buildings and unfurling signs. We may not deter all jumpers and climbers, but they should be aware that their next stunt could take place on the inside of a jail cell.

Both The Times and the police expressed dismay at the latest stunt.

“We don’t think these antics should be romanticized in any way,” Mr. Browne, the police spokesman, said, adding, “The individuals should be held accountable, prosecuted for it.”

Ms. Mathis, the spokeswoman for The Times, said, “This is a very serious matter. The climber’s irresponsible and dangerous action jeopardized his safety and the safety of others.”