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U.S. Soldiers Raid Home of Iraqi Leader; Global Oil Crisis Imminent?

Aired May 20, 2004 - 15:00   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.


FREDRICKA WHITFIELD, CNN ANCHOR: Well, welcome to the third hour of LIVE FROM. I'm Fredricka Whitfield.
DREW GRIFFIN, CNN ANCHOR: And I'm Drew Griffin. Miles and Kyra are off today. Let's check the headlines.

WHITFIELD: First up, the Iraqi police and American military personnel raid the home and offices and Iraqi Governing Council member Ahmad Chalabi. Afterward, an angry Chalabi lashed out at the Coalition Provisional Authority and former Baathists he says control the Iraqi police forces. Chalabi was a darling of the Pentagon before the war.

Well, just when you thought it couldn't get any worse, two more photos have surfaced, each showing an American soldier at Abu Ghraib prison grinning over the body of a dead Iraqi man. U.S. officials confirm the man died after questioning by CIA personnel in Iraq. The Defense Department and the CIA inspector general are investigating.

Burying the dead. Iraqis in the Associated Press video can be seen burying at least a dozen bodies, including small children. But it's not clear how they died. Iraqi witnesses say U.S. aircraft fired on a wedding party early Wednesday, killing more than 20 people. Coalition military officials insist the raid near the Syrian border targeted foreign fighters.

International condemnation has not stopped Israel's military incursion into the Rafah refugee camp in Gaza. Palestinian sources say at least eight Palestinians were killed today alone, including a local Hamas militant leader. Since Tuesday, they say 40 Palestinians have died and 107 have been wounded. Israel says it's shutting down tunnels used to smuggle arms.

GRIFFIN: Plain-talking president Harry Truman once noted, if you want a friend in Washington, get a dog. Decades later and thousands of miles from Washington, Ahmad Chalabi might be musing on those words after being rousted and raided by his former friends in the U.S. military. They and Iraqi police raided Chalabi's home and offices today, ostensibly on a fraud investigation that doesn't involve Chalabi directly. That's not how he sees it.

And we get the details now and the latest on the deadly raid near the Syrian border from CNN's Harris Whitbeck in Baghdad.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE) HARRIS WHITBECK, CNN CORRESPONDENT: U.S. soldiers and Iraqi national police raided the home of Ahmad Chalabi, a member of the Iraqi Governing Council and a longtime U.S. ally. Chalabi claimed in a press conference after the raid that he was targeted for making calls for greater Iraqi independence from the United States as preparations are under way for the handover of political power to Iraqis on June 30.

AHMAD CHALABI, IRAQI GOVERNING COUNCIL: My relationship with the CPA now is nonexistent and my relationship with the Governing Council is that my colleagues, they are great patriots. I have worked with them for many decades to fight Saddam. We won. We are in Baghdad and we hope to lead Iraq into a sovereign, independent government and with complete control over its armed forces and finance.

WHITBECK: But an Iraqi official who spoke at coalition headquarters said the warrant for the raid had been issued because the police were looking for people involved in government fraud and kidnapping.

Coalition spokesman Dan Senor said Chalabi and his organization, the Iraqi National Congress, were not the targets during today's raid. Meanwhile, more reactions to the Wednesday morning attack on a group of Iraqis near the border between Iraq and Syria. While Iraqis say American forces attacked a wedding party, the U.S. military says it was attacking a safe house in a corridor used by foreign fighters to enter Iraq and smuggle weapons.

BRIG. GEN. MARK KIMMITT, U.S. DEPUTY CHIEF OF OPERATIONS: This is one of those routes that we've watched for a long period of time as a place where foreign fighters and smugglers come into this country. We have consistently talked inside this forum about the foreign fighter flow.

This was clearly in our -- the intelligence that we had suggested that this was a foreign fighter rat line, as we call them, and one of the weigh stations. We conducted military operations down there last night. The ground force that swept through the objective found a significant amount of material and intelligence which validated that attack. And we are satisfied at this point that the intelligence that led us there was validated by what we found on the ground.

WHITBECK: But at least one member of Iraq's Governing Council said he did not fine the American story convincing. He says he believes they made a mistake.

Harris Whitbeck, Baghdad.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

WHITFIELD: Well, today, the White House is taking an arm's- length approach to what had been an arm-in-arm relationship.

CNN's Elaine Quijano is at the White House.

ELAINE QUIJANO, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Good evening, afternoon, Fredricka.

The White House is not saying whether or not President Bush views Ahmad Chalabi as a credible figure. The White House spokesman, Scott McClellan, was asked that repeatedly today at the briefing. But Chalabi in exile was a Pentagon favorite, believed to have been a source of information for the allegations of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. Now, none of course have been found.

A senior Pentagon official says this month the Pentagon made its final monthly payment of $340,000 to Chalabi's Iraqi National Congress party. Now, just a short time ago, Scott McClellan said it was not the president's place to weigh in on who was going to be the future leaders of Iraq, adding that it was up to the Iraqi people to decide.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

QUESTION: The president is not going to weigh in on whether or not he thinks his credibility

(CROSSTALK)

SCOTT MCCLELLAN, WHITE HOUSE PRESS SECRETARY: I pointed out that he has been someone that has served on the Iraqi Governing Council. That Governing Council is going to be coming to an end as we transfer sovereignty here in a few weeks. That's where the focus is now.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

QUIJANO: And just a short time after that, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld was asked about Chalabi as well. He took a very similar tact, saying that it was not for him to comment.

Now, by the way, we should mention, interesting to note, we have seen in just the last half-hour or so, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld along with the chairman of the joint chiefs, General Richard Myers and General Abizaid, all they're at the White House. We are still awaiting word on exactly the details of what might be taking place -- details regarding that meeting -- Fredricka.

WHITFIELD: And, Elaine, President Bush spent a little time on Capitol Hill. What more do we know about his meetings?

QUIJANO: well, that's right, Fredricka, a busy morning for the president.

He started the day by heading to Capitol Hill for what in effect was a rally to bring together GOP lawmakers. The president spoke to a standing-room only crowd of House and Senate Republicans. And the main topics were domestic achievements and of course Iraq. Now, the president did not take any questions during that meeting and lawmakers said, though, that he was upbeat, that he was positive.

At a time when the president's approval numbers have been down, Republicans say that he expressed confidence about his political standing because they have a record to be proud of. Now, lawmakers also say that he expressed determination, a commitment, and a sense of resolve about sticking to that June 30 deadline for the transfer of sovereignty to the interim Iraqi authority.

The president also touching on a number of other issues as well, including his budget which of course he is looking to Congress to pass -- Fredricka.

WHITFIELD: Elaine Quijano at the White House, thanks very much -- Drew.

GRIFFIN: What Chalabi calls a penultimate act of failure of the CPA in Iraq is the latest twist in a long and winding career in politics, business and diplomacy. Altogether, it's been a source of fascination for Jim Walsh, the global affairs scholar at Harvard University and guest this morning of CNN's Daryn Kagan.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

JIM WALSH, HARVARD UNIVERSITY: Talk about sour, boy, the gloves are off on this one. Both Chalabi's press conference and the spokesperson who appeared with you earlier today, they are going after the U.S. big time.

And as to why, I think it's probably a variety of factors. One is because of the new U.N. plan that will transfer power not to the Iraqi Governing Council, of which Chalabi is a member, but rather to another group, probably Chalabi is feeling a little left out in the cold and is trying to come up with a new strategy for getting back on the map, maybe trying to take power at some point later.

But there is also an issue here of whether there is any wrongdoing involved. Obviously he is a controversial fact figure with a bit of a checkered past. He was convicted of embezzling because of a bank failure in Jordan in the 1980s. So there may be a little bit of several different factors happening all at the same time.

DARYN KAGAN, CNN ANCHOR: Yes. This is a person, Chalabi, who has brought questions along with him all along the way, even though he was a favorite of the Pentagon leading up to the war. A lot of people wondered how did this person gain so much credibility when there was so many allegations of fraud and other questions around him.

WALSH: Well, Daryn, he had some pretty powerful supporters in the vice president's office, on Capitol Hill, among certain member of the Senate and, as you say, among the civilian leadership in the Pentagon.

On the other side of the aisle, however, in the intelligence community, in the CIA in particular, as well as in the State Department there were real doubts about Chalabi, the person, and about the information he was feeding us.

And of course we have found out since the end of the Gulf -- or the Iraq war that a lot of that information coming through the Iraqi National Congress, particularly about weapons of mass destruction, was wrong or misleading at best.

KAGAN: And this is a man who at one point many people believed would be the next leader of Iraq.

WALSH: I think he was one of those who thought he was going to be the next leader of Iraq. And that is probably no small part of the political dynamic here. Probably his high water mark was soon aft the fall of Saddam, him going into Baghdad with what he called his free Iraqi fighters. And I think he thought that he was on the short road to being president of Iraq.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

GRIFFIN: News across America now.

The son of Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist in legal trouble. Police say William Frist Jr. charged with driving while intoxicated early this morning. That happened near Princeton University. Frist is a sophomore at the school. He's to appear in court on Monday.

A close call for a Florida boy; 12-year-old Malcolm Locke was swimming in a lake yesterday when he was attacked by a gator, a big one, too. The gator dragged him under the water by his head. The boy was able to get away with just a few lacerations.

For a Texas Marine, honor extends far beyond the battlefield. First Lieutenant Jeremy Duncan returned from Iraq last year to learn his best buddy needed a kidney transplant. Duncan proved to be a match and today he is scheduled to donate one of his kidneys to his friend. Duncan should be able to return to full duty in several weeks.

With worldwide crude oil consumption at a record high, is it possible the world could soon run out of oil?

Here's CNN Financial News correspondent Chris Huntington.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

CHRIS HUNTINGTON, CNN CORRESPONDENT, (voice over): Oil prices at record levels. Global crude demand at an all-time high and looming threats to the Middle East oil fields have rekindled the long-running debate over just when the world will start to run out of oil. David Goodstein, a physicist at the California Institute of Technology and author of Out of Gas, believes it will be sooner rather than later.

PROFESSOR DAVID GOODSTEIN, CALTECH: It probably will happen sometime in the next 10 to 20 years and may have already begun.

HUNTINGTON: Even those less worried about supply say the oil markets have turned a corner.

KAREN MATUSIC, ENERGY INTELLIGENCE GROUP: We're not running out of crude oil. We might be running out of cheap crude oil.

HUNTINGTON: Several factors are driving those fears. Global oil consumption is at a record 80 million barrels a day. The United States burns a quarter of that but China's demand is surging. For now, global crude production is keeping pace while adding something to stockpiles, but there's very little slack in the system. Only about 2 or 3 million barrels a day of spare production capacity. And almost all of that is in Saudi Arabia, where safety of that supply is now in question.

Then there is the big issue of just how much oil the was in the first place. The U.S. Geologic Survey's best estimate is that the Earth once held about 2. 2 trillion barrels of recoverable oil. If that's accurate, then in less than a century we've burned through close to half of that original supply.

Based on that, the International Energy Agency projects that global crude oil production will most likely max out at around 2026, followed by a rapid decline. Goodstein predicts a crisis with high inflation.

GOODSTEIN: If we're lucky, that will be the worst of it. Higher prices will prompt other hydrocarbons to be substituted for the oil and we'll muddle along some how. If we're less lucky, we'll have a repeat of what happened in 1973.

HUNTINGTON (on camera): Also adding to the supply concerns is the fact that there's been only one major oil discovery in the past 20 years. And the world's second largest oil company, Royal Dutch/Shell recently admitted that it had greatly exaggerated its own crude reserves.

Chris Huntington, CNN Financial News, New York.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

GRIFFIN: Next, something I know little about, the blessing and curse of being a genius, why some of the world's most creative people are haunted by mental illness.

WHITFIELD: And bread fights back with a new campaign against the low-carb craze. Will they tempt you to make a sandwich or two?

GRIFFIN: And later, "American Idol" strategy, not just the contestants who need one. Voters are coming up with their strategies, too.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

(WEATHER UPDATE)

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

GRIFFIN: History has shown that some of the most brilliant minds often aren't the most socially fit. Scientists today continue to study whether what makes some people a genius also makes them crazy.

It's a question our Anderson Cooper examines in his series, "Unlocking the Secrets of the Brain."

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE) ANDERSON COOPER, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): From artist Vincent van Gogh's Starry Strokes to mathematician John Nash's window scribbles, as see in the film A Beautiful Mind, in the works of brilliant minds throughout history creativity and mental illness have often crossed paths.

CAREN LERMAN, FATHER OF AUTISTIC SON: I feel as though his artwork is a window into his soul.

COOPER: Caren Lerman's son Jonathan may not speak like other 16- year-old boys but with a pencil in hand he can communicate a world of knowledge and unending creativity. Jonathan is an autistic savant.

LERMAN: Through Jonathan's art we see that he's taking in a lot more than we ever realized and I think he feels things even more keenly than we do.

COOPER: Jonathan began sketching when he was ten. Today his works sell for thousands of dollars.

LERMAN: He wants to be like everybody else and he knows he isn't. It's abstract for him to say that verbally, you know, that he's lonely but he's letting us know this way.

COOPER: But scientists are wondering how we can emulate Jonathan's level of creativity by studying how autism and other mental illnesses, like psychosis, can increase a person's potential for creativity.

SHELLEY CARSON, HARVARD UNIVERSITY, DEPARTMENT OF PSYCHOLOGY: What's causing the dots to appear?

COOPER: Harvard professor Dr. Shelley Carson recently completed a study which uncovered a link between creativity and mental illness. The connection, both highly creative people and psychosis prone people have reduced levels of what doctors call latent inhibition, that is, they can't ignore all the extraneous and irrelevant things that happen in the environment around them. And a possible explanation for this, dopamine.

CARSON: Reduced latent inhibition is associated with higher levels of dopamine in the mesolimbic system of the brain.

COOPER: So, depending on your level of intelligence and dopamine absorbing the information around you may actually fuel creativity or madness.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

GRIFFIN: And tonight, Anderson examines what many of us want to know and some of us already know, how the minds of men differ from the minds of women. That's 7:00 Eastern and 4:00 Pacific.

WHITFIELD: And that will open up some really interesting dialogue, you know.

GRIFFIN: You bet. It will.

WHITFIELD: All right, well, Kelsey Grammer is coming back to television. Just a week after "Frasier" said goodbye, guess what, Grammer's got a new show.

(CROSSTALK)

GRIFFIN: ... being an "American Idol" viewer. Entertainment buzz just ahead.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

(FINANCIAL UPDATE)

WHITFIELD: Well, checking entertainment headlines this Thursday, "Frasier" is finished, but star Kelsey Grammer already has another iron in the showbiz fire. Grammer hosts a series of sketch comedies on Fox beginning in November. The show is based on a British sears that offers comedy in unexpected places. Grammer says his "Frasier" fans jokes will be flummoxed, and flatulence jokes will be carrying on and other things for the show are in store.

And "Spider-Man 2" will be spinning its wheels instead of on a web of Chinese movie screens this summer. In order to help prop up the local film industry, China plans to completely suspend import of foreign films, like "Spidey" and "Shrek 2" during the month of July.

And Quentin Tarantino fans may not believe there was once a time that you could actually scare people by using chocolate syrup as a stand-in for blood. But the shower scene in "Psycho" remains the critic's choice for best movie death scene of all time. So says a British movie magazine poll. And who would argue with that?

GRIFFIN: It was scary.

Jasmine's out, so it's down to Fantasia and Diana. If you have no idea what I'm talking about, you're obviously not a fan of this show, "American Idol." Jasmine Trias got the boot last night, clearing a way for a showdown, Fantasia Barrino to go against Diana DeGarmo in next week's highly anticipated finale. Fans decide who becomes the next "American Idol." The finalists' home towns are in high gear preparing to put their candidate over the top.

CNN's Gary Tuchman explains that.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

GARY TUCHMAN, CNN NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): At this huge church in North Carolina, hundreds of people are worshipping an idol.

TUCHMAN: Many in Fantasia Barrino's hometown of High Point believe she is the "American Idol." Addie Collins is Fantasia's grandmother.

TUCHMAN (on camera): Are you going to vote? ADDIE COLLINS, GRANDMOTHER OF FANTASIA: Yes, I am. I'm going to pray and then vote.

TUCHMAN: And how many times are you going to vote?

COLLINS: She say as many -- she say all the way up to 300.

TUCHMAN: Back in the heyday of machine politics in the city of Chicago, there were those told to vote early and vote often, corrupt advice for an American election, essential advice for an "American Idol."

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Still busy.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: I got through.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: I got through.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: I got it. It's ringing, yes, yes.

TUCHMAN (voice-over): Community leaders in the areas where "American Idol" contestants live implore residents to vote for their local idol and to do it frequently. Some people wish they had three ears.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: We want people to just go out and vote even though they think she's safe.

TUCHMAN: They are voting for Diana DeGarmo, high school from Snellville, Georgia, who has much of metropolitan Atlanta casting multiple votes.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: About 450 I think is the most times that I've done it.

TUCHMAN: Alabaman Ruben Studdard was the last "American Idol."

RUBEN STUDDARD, SINGER: When you have the whole state behind you, it really -- it makes a difference.

TUCHMAN: Not since the days of hanging chads has voting received this much attention. "Idol" fans allege issues ranging from the unlimited voting to racism have made the balloting unfair. The show's producers disagree and sing the praises of their unique form of democracy.

Gary Tuchman, CNN, High Point, North Carolina.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

GRIFFIN: Quite an election.

WHITFIELD: Are you hooked?

GRIFFIN: No, I'm not. Are you?

WHITFIELD: I'm not hooked. I just watched it last week for the first time and now I do want to know who wins it next week.

GRIFFIN: All right, you tune in and tell me.

WHITFIELD: But they stretch it out. It will be two hours. I will just catch like the last 10 minutes.

(LAUGHTER)

GRIFFIN: That's going to wrap it up for this Thursday edition of LIVE FROM.

TO ORDER A VIDEO OF THIS TRANSCRIPT, PLEASE CALL 800-CNN-NEWS OR USE OUR SECURE ONLINE ORDER FORM LOCATED AT www.fdch.com


Aired May 20, 2004 - 15:00   ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
FREDRICKA WHITFIELD, CNN ANCHOR: Well, welcome to the third hour of LIVE FROM. I'm Fredricka Whitfield.
DREW GRIFFIN, CNN ANCHOR: And I'm Drew Griffin. Miles and Kyra are off today. Let's check the headlines.

WHITFIELD: First up, the Iraqi police and American military personnel raid the home and offices and Iraqi Governing Council member Ahmad Chalabi. Afterward, an angry Chalabi lashed out at the Coalition Provisional Authority and former Baathists he says control the Iraqi police forces. Chalabi was a darling of the Pentagon before the war.

Well, just when you thought it couldn't get any worse, two more photos have surfaced, each showing an American soldier at Abu Ghraib prison grinning over the body of a dead Iraqi man. U.S. officials confirm the man died after questioning by CIA personnel in Iraq. The Defense Department and the CIA inspector general are investigating.

Burying the dead. Iraqis in the Associated Press video can be seen burying at least a dozen bodies, including small children. But it's not clear how they died. Iraqi witnesses say U.S. aircraft fired on a wedding party early Wednesday, killing more than 20 people. Coalition military officials insist the raid near the Syrian border targeted foreign fighters.

International condemnation has not stopped Israel's military incursion into the Rafah refugee camp in Gaza. Palestinian sources say at least eight Palestinians were killed today alone, including a local Hamas militant leader. Since Tuesday, they say 40 Palestinians have died and 107 have been wounded. Israel says it's shutting down tunnels used to smuggle arms.

GRIFFIN: Plain-talking president Harry Truman once noted, if you want a friend in Washington, get a dog. Decades later and thousands of miles from Washington, Ahmad Chalabi might be musing on those words after being rousted and raided by his former friends in the U.S. military. They and Iraqi police raided Chalabi's home and offices today, ostensibly on a fraud investigation that doesn't involve Chalabi directly. That's not how he sees it.

And we get the details now and the latest on the deadly raid near the Syrian border from CNN's Harris Whitbeck in Baghdad.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE) HARRIS WHITBECK, CNN CORRESPONDENT: U.S. soldiers and Iraqi national police raided the home of Ahmad Chalabi, a member of the Iraqi Governing Council and a longtime U.S. ally. Chalabi claimed in a press conference after the raid that he was targeted for making calls for greater Iraqi independence from the United States as preparations are under way for the handover of political power to Iraqis on June 30.

AHMAD CHALABI, IRAQI GOVERNING COUNCIL: My relationship with the CPA now is nonexistent and my relationship with the Governing Council is that my colleagues, they are great patriots. I have worked with them for many decades to fight Saddam. We won. We are in Baghdad and we hope to lead Iraq into a sovereign, independent government and with complete control over its armed forces and finance.

WHITBECK: But an Iraqi official who spoke at coalition headquarters said the warrant for the raid had been issued because the police were looking for people involved in government fraud and kidnapping.

Coalition spokesman Dan Senor said Chalabi and his organization, the Iraqi National Congress, were not the targets during today's raid. Meanwhile, more reactions to the Wednesday morning attack on a group of Iraqis near the border between Iraq and Syria. While Iraqis say American forces attacked a wedding party, the U.S. military says it was attacking a safe house in a corridor used by foreign fighters to enter Iraq and smuggle weapons.

BRIG. GEN. MARK KIMMITT, U.S. DEPUTY CHIEF OF OPERATIONS: This is one of those routes that we've watched for a long period of time as a place where foreign fighters and smugglers come into this country. We have consistently talked inside this forum about the foreign fighter flow.

This was clearly in our -- the intelligence that we had suggested that this was a foreign fighter rat line, as we call them, and one of the weigh stations. We conducted military operations down there last night. The ground force that swept through the objective found a significant amount of material and intelligence which validated that attack. And we are satisfied at this point that the intelligence that led us there was validated by what we found on the ground.

WHITBECK: But at least one member of Iraq's Governing Council said he did not fine the American story convincing. He says he believes they made a mistake.

Harris Whitbeck, Baghdad.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

WHITFIELD: Well, today, the White House is taking an arm's- length approach to what had been an arm-in-arm relationship.

CNN's Elaine Quijano is at the White House.

ELAINE QUIJANO, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Good evening, afternoon, Fredricka.

The White House is not saying whether or not President Bush views Ahmad Chalabi as a credible figure. The White House spokesman, Scott McClellan, was asked that repeatedly today at the briefing. But Chalabi in exile was a Pentagon favorite, believed to have been a source of information for the allegations of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. Now, none of course have been found.

A senior Pentagon official says this month the Pentagon made its final monthly payment of $340,000 to Chalabi's Iraqi National Congress party. Now, just a short time ago, Scott McClellan said it was not the president's place to weigh in on who was going to be the future leaders of Iraq, adding that it was up to the Iraqi people to decide.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

QUESTION: The president is not going to weigh in on whether or not he thinks his credibility

(CROSSTALK)

SCOTT MCCLELLAN, WHITE HOUSE PRESS SECRETARY: I pointed out that he has been someone that has served on the Iraqi Governing Council. That Governing Council is going to be coming to an end as we transfer sovereignty here in a few weeks. That's where the focus is now.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

QUIJANO: And just a short time after that, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld was asked about Chalabi as well. He took a very similar tact, saying that it was not for him to comment.

Now, by the way, we should mention, interesting to note, we have seen in just the last half-hour or so, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld along with the chairman of the joint chiefs, General Richard Myers and General Abizaid, all they're at the White House. We are still awaiting word on exactly the details of what might be taking place -- details regarding that meeting -- Fredricka.

WHITFIELD: And, Elaine, President Bush spent a little time on Capitol Hill. What more do we know about his meetings?

QUIJANO: well, that's right, Fredricka, a busy morning for the president.

He started the day by heading to Capitol Hill for what in effect was a rally to bring together GOP lawmakers. The president spoke to a standing-room only crowd of House and Senate Republicans. And the main topics were domestic achievements and of course Iraq. Now, the president did not take any questions during that meeting and lawmakers said, though, that he was upbeat, that he was positive.

At a time when the president's approval numbers have been down, Republicans say that he expressed confidence about his political standing because they have a record to be proud of. Now, lawmakers also say that he expressed determination, a commitment, and a sense of resolve about sticking to that June 30 deadline for the transfer of sovereignty to the interim Iraqi authority.

The president also touching on a number of other issues as well, including his budget which of course he is looking to Congress to pass -- Fredricka.

WHITFIELD: Elaine Quijano at the White House, thanks very much -- Drew.

GRIFFIN: What Chalabi calls a penultimate act of failure of the CPA in Iraq is the latest twist in a long and winding career in politics, business and diplomacy. Altogether, it's been a source of fascination for Jim Walsh, the global affairs scholar at Harvard University and guest this morning of CNN's Daryn Kagan.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

JIM WALSH, HARVARD UNIVERSITY: Talk about sour, boy, the gloves are off on this one. Both Chalabi's press conference and the spokesperson who appeared with you earlier today, they are going after the U.S. big time.

And as to why, I think it's probably a variety of factors. One is because of the new U.N. plan that will transfer power not to the Iraqi Governing Council, of which Chalabi is a member, but rather to another group, probably Chalabi is feeling a little left out in the cold and is trying to come up with a new strategy for getting back on the map, maybe trying to take power at some point later.

But there is also an issue here of whether there is any wrongdoing involved. Obviously he is a controversial fact figure with a bit of a checkered past. He was convicted of embezzling because of a bank failure in Jordan in the 1980s. So there may be a little bit of several different factors happening all at the same time.

DARYN KAGAN, CNN ANCHOR: Yes. This is a person, Chalabi, who has brought questions along with him all along the way, even though he was a favorite of the Pentagon leading up to the war. A lot of people wondered how did this person gain so much credibility when there was so many allegations of fraud and other questions around him.

WALSH: Well, Daryn, he had some pretty powerful supporters in the vice president's office, on Capitol Hill, among certain member of the Senate and, as you say, among the civilian leadership in the Pentagon.

On the other side of the aisle, however, in the intelligence community, in the CIA in particular, as well as in the State Department there were real doubts about Chalabi, the person, and about the information he was feeding us.

And of course we have found out since the end of the Gulf -- or the Iraq war that a lot of that information coming through the Iraqi National Congress, particularly about weapons of mass destruction, was wrong or misleading at best.

KAGAN: And this is a man who at one point many people believed would be the next leader of Iraq.

WALSH: I think he was one of those who thought he was going to be the next leader of Iraq. And that is probably no small part of the political dynamic here. Probably his high water mark was soon aft the fall of Saddam, him going into Baghdad with what he called his free Iraqi fighters. And I think he thought that he was on the short road to being president of Iraq.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

GRIFFIN: News across America now.

The son of Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist in legal trouble. Police say William Frist Jr. charged with driving while intoxicated early this morning. That happened near Princeton University. Frist is a sophomore at the school. He's to appear in court on Monday.

A close call for a Florida boy; 12-year-old Malcolm Locke was swimming in a lake yesterday when he was attacked by a gator, a big one, too. The gator dragged him under the water by his head. The boy was able to get away with just a few lacerations.

For a Texas Marine, honor extends far beyond the battlefield. First Lieutenant Jeremy Duncan returned from Iraq last year to learn his best buddy needed a kidney transplant. Duncan proved to be a match and today he is scheduled to donate one of his kidneys to his friend. Duncan should be able to return to full duty in several weeks.

With worldwide crude oil consumption at a record high, is it possible the world could soon run out of oil?

Here's CNN Financial News correspondent Chris Huntington.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

CHRIS HUNTINGTON, CNN CORRESPONDENT, (voice over): Oil prices at record levels. Global crude demand at an all-time high and looming threats to the Middle East oil fields have rekindled the long-running debate over just when the world will start to run out of oil. David Goodstein, a physicist at the California Institute of Technology and author of Out of Gas, believes it will be sooner rather than later.

PROFESSOR DAVID GOODSTEIN, CALTECH: It probably will happen sometime in the next 10 to 20 years and may have already begun.

HUNTINGTON: Even those less worried about supply say the oil markets have turned a corner.

KAREN MATUSIC, ENERGY INTELLIGENCE GROUP: We're not running out of crude oil. We might be running out of cheap crude oil.

HUNTINGTON: Several factors are driving those fears. Global oil consumption is at a record 80 million barrels a day. The United States burns a quarter of that but China's demand is surging. For now, global crude production is keeping pace while adding something to stockpiles, but there's very little slack in the system. Only about 2 or 3 million barrels a day of spare production capacity. And almost all of that is in Saudi Arabia, where safety of that supply is now in question.

Then there is the big issue of just how much oil the was in the first place. The U.S. Geologic Survey's best estimate is that the Earth once held about 2. 2 trillion barrels of recoverable oil. If that's accurate, then in less than a century we've burned through close to half of that original supply.

Based on that, the International Energy Agency projects that global crude oil production will most likely max out at around 2026, followed by a rapid decline. Goodstein predicts a crisis with high inflation.

GOODSTEIN: If we're lucky, that will be the worst of it. Higher prices will prompt other hydrocarbons to be substituted for the oil and we'll muddle along some how. If we're less lucky, we'll have a repeat of what happened in 1973.

HUNTINGTON (on camera): Also adding to the supply concerns is the fact that there's been only one major oil discovery in the past 20 years. And the world's second largest oil company, Royal Dutch/Shell recently admitted that it had greatly exaggerated its own crude reserves.

Chris Huntington, CNN Financial News, New York.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

GRIFFIN: Next, something I know little about, the blessing and curse of being a genius, why some of the world's most creative people are haunted by mental illness.

WHITFIELD: And bread fights back with a new campaign against the low-carb craze. Will they tempt you to make a sandwich or two?

GRIFFIN: And later, "American Idol" strategy, not just the contestants who need one. Voters are coming up with their strategies, too.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

(WEATHER UPDATE)

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

GRIFFIN: History has shown that some of the most brilliant minds often aren't the most socially fit. Scientists today continue to study whether what makes some people a genius also makes them crazy.

It's a question our Anderson Cooper examines in his series, "Unlocking the Secrets of the Brain."

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE) ANDERSON COOPER, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): From artist Vincent van Gogh's Starry Strokes to mathematician John Nash's window scribbles, as see in the film A Beautiful Mind, in the works of brilliant minds throughout history creativity and mental illness have often crossed paths.

CAREN LERMAN, FATHER OF AUTISTIC SON: I feel as though his artwork is a window into his soul.

COOPER: Caren Lerman's son Jonathan may not speak like other 16- year-old boys but with a pencil in hand he can communicate a world of knowledge and unending creativity. Jonathan is an autistic savant.

LERMAN: Through Jonathan's art we see that he's taking in a lot more than we ever realized and I think he feels things even more keenly than we do.

COOPER: Jonathan began sketching when he was ten. Today his works sell for thousands of dollars.

LERMAN: He wants to be like everybody else and he knows he isn't. It's abstract for him to say that verbally, you know, that he's lonely but he's letting us know this way.

COOPER: But scientists are wondering how we can emulate Jonathan's level of creativity by studying how autism and other mental illnesses, like psychosis, can increase a person's potential for creativity.

SHELLEY CARSON, HARVARD UNIVERSITY, DEPARTMENT OF PSYCHOLOGY: What's causing the dots to appear?

COOPER: Harvard professor Dr. Shelley Carson recently completed a study which uncovered a link between creativity and mental illness. The connection, both highly creative people and psychosis prone people have reduced levels of what doctors call latent inhibition, that is, they can't ignore all the extraneous and irrelevant things that happen in the environment around them. And a possible explanation for this, dopamine.

CARSON: Reduced latent inhibition is associated with higher levels of dopamine in the mesolimbic system of the brain.

COOPER: So, depending on your level of intelligence and dopamine absorbing the information around you may actually fuel creativity or madness.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

GRIFFIN: And tonight, Anderson examines what many of us want to know and some of us already know, how the minds of men differ from the minds of women. That's 7:00 Eastern and 4:00 Pacific.

WHITFIELD: And that will open up some really interesting dialogue, you know.

GRIFFIN: You bet. It will.

WHITFIELD: All right, well, Kelsey Grammer is coming back to television. Just a week after "Frasier" said goodbye, guess what, Grammer's got a new show.

(CROSSTALK)

GRIFFIN: ... being an "American Idol" viewer. Entertainment buzz just ahead.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

(FINANCIAL UPDATE)

WHITFIELD: Well, checking entertainment headlines this Thursday, "Frasier" is finished, but star Kelsey Grammer already has another iron in the showbiz fire. Grammer hosts a series of sketch comedies on Fox beginning in November. The show is based on a British sears that offers comedy in unexpected places. Grammer says his "Frasier" fans jokes will be flummoxed, and flatulence jokes will be carrying on and other things for the show are in store.

And "Spider-Man 2" will be spinning its wheels instead of on a web of Chinese movie screens this summer. In order to help prop up the local film industry, China plans to completely suspend import of foreign films, like "Spidey" and "Shrek 2" during the month of July.

And Quentin Tarantino fans may not believe there was once a time that you could actually scare people by using chocolate syrup as a stand-in for blood. But the shower scene in "Psycho" remains the critic's choice for best movie death scene of all time. So says a British movie magazine poll. And who would argue with that?

GRIFFIN: It was scary.

Jasmine's out, so it's down to Fantasia and Diana. If you have no idea what I'm talking about, you're obviously not a fan of this show, "American Idol." Jasmine Trias got the boot last night, clearing a way for a showdown, Fantasia Barrino to go against Diana DeGarmo in next week's highly anticipated finale. Fans decide who becomes the next "American Idol." The finalists' home towns are in high gear preparing to put their candidate over the top.

CNN's Gary Tuchman explains that.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

GARY TUCHMAN, CNN NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): At this huge church in North Carolina, hundreds of people are worshipping an idol.

TUCHMAN: Many in Fantasia Barrino's hometown of High Point believe she is the "American Idol." Addie Collins is Fantasia's grandmother.

TUCHMAN (on camera): Are you going to vote? ADDIE COLLINS, GRANDMOTHER OF FANTASIA: Yes, I am. I'm going to pray and then vote.

TUCHMAN: And how many times are you going to vote?

COLLINS: She say as many -- she say all the way up to 300.

TUCHMAN: Back in the heyday of machine politics in the city of Chicago, there were those told to vote early and vote often, corrupt advice for an American election, essential advice for an "American Idol."

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Still busy.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: I got through.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: I got through.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: I got it. It's ringing, yes, yes.

TUCHMAN (voice-over): Community leaders in the areas where "American Idol" contestants live implore residents to vote for their local idol and to do it frequently. Some people wish they had three ears.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: We want people to just go out and vote even though they think she's safe.

TUCHMAN: They are voting for Diana DeGarmo, high school from Snellville, Georgia, who has much of metropolitan Atlanta casting multiple votes.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: About 450 I think is the most times that I've done it.

TUCHMAN: Alabaman Ruben Studdard was the last "American Idol."

RUBEN STUDDARD, SINGER: When you have the whole state behind you, it really -- it makes a difference.

TUCHMAN: Not since the days of hanging chads has voting received this much attention. "Idol" fans allege issues ranging from the unlimited voting to racism have made the balloting unfair. The show's producers disagree and sing the praises of their unique form of democracy.

Gary Tuchman, CNN, High Point, North Carolina.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

GRIFFIN: Quite an election.

WHITFIELD: Are you hooked?

GRIFFIN: No, I'm not. Are you?

WHITFIELD: I'm not hooked. I just watched it last week for the first time and now I do want to know who wins it next week.

GRIFFIN: All right, you tune in and tell me.

WHITFIELD: But they stretch it out. It will be two hours. I will just catch like the last 10 minutes.

(LAUGHTER)

GRIFFIN: That's going to wrap it up for this Thursday edition of LIVE FROM.

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