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A Closer Look at CIA History

Aired June 04, 2004 - 13:30   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.


CAROL LIN, CNN ANCHOR: A protest in Italy. Tens of thousands of anti-war demonstrators are protesting President Bush's visit to Rome. He's marking the 60th anniversary of Italy's liberation from the Nazis. The president met with Italy's prime minister and Pope John Paul II who's against the war in Iraq.
Iraqi police make an important terror arrest. The coalition says officers arrested an associate of Abu Musab al Zarqawi, the most wanted Iraqi insurgent leader. Police described the suspect as a known terrorist who's also wanted in connection with anti-coalition activities.

A warning today that al Qaeda may look to cause chaos in Iraq before the hand-over of sovereignty. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld says he believes the terror group will step up attacks in Iraq leading up to the June 30 hand-over.

Rumsfeld says U.S. intelligence has intercepted al Qaeda communications indicating the group believes it will have a harder time operating in Iraq after the power transfer.

KYRA PHILLIPS, CNN ANCHOR: The secret is out at the nation's spy agency. CIA Director George Tenet is leaving amid intense political scrutiny of that agency. Tenet announced his resignation yesterday to the Central Intelligence Agency's staff.

Some Democrats say the Bush administration is using Tenet as a scapegoat. Tenet says his decision to leave is personal. He discounted claims that his resignation has to do with intelligence failures involving 9/11 or Iraqi. Some highly critical reports on those intelligence failures are due out soon.

But is George Tenet the only one who should be taking the heat over an agency that has changed drastically over the years? We take a closer look at the CIA's history with CNN contributor and former Congressman Bob Barr. He served in the CIA from 1971 to 1978. Now, Bob, you said this was long overdue, why?

BOB BARR, CNN CONTRIBUTOR: Well it's long overdue because we've had a series of intelligence failures that can only be described as phenomenal over the last three or four years.

The agency has never recovered from the debacle of going back to the Clinton -- to the Carter administration. And then that was followed in recent years by the Clinton administration downgrading intelligence, putting limitations on it. The agency has not had the sort of leadership that it need with vision and a long-term strategy for many years now. And we're paying a very heavy price as we can see from what's happening in Iraq.

PHILLIPS: All right, well let's take viewers back. Let's talk about after World War II when things were looking pretty good when it came to human intelligence. Right?

Then Carter came in and brought in Stan Turner has his head for CIA. Is this -- what went wrong? What happened?

BARR: What went wrong in the Carter administration is they brought Stansfield Turner in who was a technicrat. And his philosophy seemed to be getting rid of the old guys running around the agency that went back to the World War II and the early days of the Cold War, people who knew and understood what's called intelligence trade craft. They understood communism. They understood the world. And replace them with a bunch of technicrats who just sat there and looked at picture and listened to signals intelligence with earphones on.

PHILLIPS: You are talking satellite pictures versus human intelligence and covert action.

BARR: They came enamored with technology. And no matter how good technology is, no matter how good the picture is it won't tell you the intentions of our adversaries.

PHILLIPS: All right, so then here comes the situation in Iran. You've got the shah, you've got the Ayatollah. Obviously the U.S. didn't show its support for the shah, the Ayatollah stepped in. What happened?

BARR: Well Carter bought into this notion the Ayatollah was a human rights activist. He wasn't. And what we lost was the greatest single intelligence asset that we had anywhere in the Middle East. And that was to use Iran as a base of operations.

We lost that. We lost countless individual assets. And we have never recovered from that because we've never paid sufficient attention to the Middle East and to these terrorist organizations that grew up in the wake of the Ayatollah coming in.

PHILLIPS: All right so we lost good sources in the Middle East. What about when Reagan came in? He focused on human intelligence. Didn't he try to bring the old school back?

BARR: Reagan did. And in the early years of the Reagan administration we saw Bill Casey brought in, who, again, understood from the old World War II office of -- OSF days. He understood all of that.

Unfortunately later on in the Reagan administration they got sidetracked by Iran-Gate and the Contra Affair. And they never really got back to focusing on intelligence to institutionalize the changes like they really needed to. PHILLIPS: All right, so George Tenet came in. He tried to get the focus back on human intelligence. Obviously we saw what happened with weapons of mass destruction, the Iraq War, lack of intelligence there.

Now looking for a new director of the CIA, you say it's got to be someone like Allen Dulles. Now you're taking us back. Why Allen Dulles. What made Allen Dulles so successful?

BARR: What made Allen Dulles so successful is he freed the agency apparatus from the day to day mundane operations, focused on the big picture and brought people into the agency that had imagination, that could look beyond the next day's headlines.

And he also brought in people into the intelligence business who were not beholden to a particular president or a particular party. And that's extremely intelligent to get the objectivity in intelligence analysis that has been lacking in event years and specifically in Iraq.

PHILLIPS: One final question. I said to you give me a couple of players. You said Tom Kean, Tom Ridge, Frank Keating. Real quickly, tell me why these three.

BARR: These would be very good people to President Bush to keep in mind because they understand national security, they understand that there is a difference between military intelligence, which has been very narrowly focused, too narrowly, and the bigger national security picture.

If you go to the military intelligence, we're going to see a continuation of what's happened in Iraq.

PHILLIPS: Bob Barr. It'll be interesting. We'll see if any of these players surface. Thanks for your time.

BARR: Will be interesting.

PHILLIPS: We'll be talking with you a lot more, I'm sure. Thank you.

LIN: All right, right now we're going to Asia, Kyra. Carrying candles and waving banners, tens of thousands of demonstrators filled the streets of Hong Kong today marking the 15th anniversary of the bloody crackdown on pro-democracy student protests at Beijing's Tiananmen Square.

This year's demonstration was made more intense, or more tense, by protesters anger over China's hardline stance against democracy in Hong Kong.

Well what happened in Tiananmen Square is something the world will likely never forget. Aaron Brown take as look back.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE) AARON BROWN, CNN ANCHOR (voice-over): The pictures, of course, endure, thousands of Chinese students filling the august Tiananmen Square during their struggle for democracy in a communist state. Many Americans barely remember it now. There was that styrofoam Statue of Liberty surrounded by milling students.

There were the stretchers and the ambulances lined up for the casualties. And on the night itself, armored personnel carriers and tanks of the People's Liberation Army arrived, some of them soon to be in flames, and that instantly famous image, a single Chinese student standing in the way of an advancing tank.

Fifteen years later, there is still considerable debate about what happened when Chinese soldiers surrounded the square. Many say that few if any students were actually killed there. The dead -- and nobody seems to know the real number for certain -- may have been mostly citizens of Beijing, killed as the Army swept through city neighborhoods in the hours and days after the students left Tiananmen.

The street battle for democracy in China was over in weeks, the protest crushed. And even now in China, the debate goes on, quietly, in the ways of the Chinese government, about whether what it did 15 years ago was right.

Aaron Brown, CNN, New York.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

PHILLIPS: CNN watchers in China are missing out on much of our coverage of the Tiananmen anniversary. Government sensors in Beijing have repeatedly blacked out the audio and video when we air reports about the anniversary of the crackdown. Take a look at what happened today.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED CNN ANCHOR: ... to commemorate the 15th anniversary of Beijing's bloody crackdown on the 1989 student-led protest. When the former student leaders of the...

(AUDIO/VIDEO GAP)

(END VIDEO CLIP)

PHILLIPS: Black-out. CNN is no stranger to Chinese censorship. You may remember in 1989 authorities in Beijing blacked out live coverage of the protests in Tiananmen Square.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well, the government has ordered us to shut down our facility, (UNINTELLIGIBLE). We'll have to shut it down.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: OK, the government -- our policy is the government has ordered us to shut down our facility. We are shutting down our facility.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

PHILLIPS: CNN broadcasts in China are available mostly in hotels and apartment compounds for travelers. Select government agencies and schools also have access.

LIN: In other news, Smarty Jones is a little more than 24 hours away from the biggest race of his life, but the fact that he's even a contender is a feat in itself. How murder, alcoholism and a near fatal accident paved this horse's way to race for the triple crown.

Plus, find out how this billionaire is heating up the race for the White House.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

PHILLIPS: Well a lot is at stake at Belmont Park this weekend. Horse racing fans could get their first triple crown winner in 26 years. Is the chestnut colt, Smarty Jones, the one to do it?

CNN Sport's Josie Burke is live from Belmont now in New York to tell us more -- Josie.

JOSIE BURKE, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Kyra, this is the sixth time in the last eight years that a horse has come here to the Belmont Stakes with a chance to win the triple crown. And the previous five have all failed, but many people are convinced that Smarty Jones will succeed. And they believe that, in large part, because they know what this young horse has had to overcome in his lifetime, and they don't believe that he'll stumble now.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

BURKE (voice-over): Smarty Jones remarkable race to immortality could have just as easily have been a journey to nowhere. Last summer, he came face to face with death, after hitting his head during a training accident in a starting gate.

JOHN SERVIS, SMARTY JONES' TRAINER: He just lunged out over the top of the front doors, and saw that daylight, I guess, and decided he wanted to get out of there, and hit his head across the iron bar across the top of the gate, and tore his head up pretty good.

BURKE: It was the horse's turn to experience the pain that lived all around him. Smarty Jones's original trainer was murdered in 2001. Afterwards, his owners, Pat and Roy Chapman, nearly got out of the business entirely. Today, Roy gets around the track in a wheelchair, supported by oxygen, weakened by emphysema.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE He's obviously wanting to be at the barn more and wanted to spend a lot more time with the horse. When you get a horse like this, you want to spend as much time as you can with him, and he hasn't been able to do that.

BURKE: On race day, Smarty's talent is handled by 39-year-old jockey Stewart Elliott. Elliott, too, could just have easily been elsewhere today. He's battled a weight problem and alcoholism. He's had run-ins with the law. Now Elliott is a key part of the team that is, against all logic, at the top of the horse racing world.

STEWART ELLIOTT, SMARTY JONES' JOCKEY: There's nothing to hide. Everybody's asked all of the questions. I've told them everything they want to know.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE; There are so many twists to the story, and it's gotten everybody involved, and nationwide, people have fallen in love with my horse.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

BURKE: Smarty Jones was out on the Belmont track earlier this morning, getting used to it, going around the one and a half mile track. We can also report he had a really good bath this morning, and he's squeaky clean and ready for what could be a very important day in his life tomorrow -- Kyra.

PHILLIPS: All right, Josie Burke, thanks so much -- Carol.

LIN: Well, the billionaire George Soros has made no secret of the fact that he wants to drive George Bush out of the White House this fall. But some of his recent comments about the Bush administration are raising more than a few eyebrows.

Ed Henry reports.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

ED HENRY, CNN CONGRESSIONAL CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): George Tenet's resignation was greeted with cheers at this gathering of 2,000 liberal activists already pumped up by the president's declining poll numbers.

HOWARD DEAN (D), FMR. PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: It's about time somebody in this administration resigned over all the misdeeds that have gone on and let this not be the first one culminating on November 2 when George Bush is the last one to fall.

HENRY: The left wing has energy and money thanks to billionaire George Soros who has already given $15 million to progressive groups and vowed to spend what it takes to defeat President Bush. Soros was introduced by Hillary Clinton and then issued a call to arms saying his check book alone will not carry Senator John Kerry to victory.

GEORGE SOROS, SOROS FOUNDATION: Hillary, again, said the right thing. That it isn't one person with money that can make a difference. It can only make a difference if there are people in the country who believe in those ideas and are willing to stand up.

HENRY: Soros, a Hungarian Jew who survived the Holocaust has said that when the president says you're with us or against us, it reminds him of the Nazis and he issued a broad indictment of Bush's national security record. SOROS: This is a very tough thing to say, but the fact is, that the war on terror as conducted by this administration has claimed more innocent victims than the original attack itself.

HENRY: Soros also equated the Iraqi prisoner abuse to the 9/11 attacks. Republican party chairman Ed Gillespie blasted Soros for making that connection and made it clear that if Democrats take the billionaire's money, they'll have to answer for his opinions.

ED GILLESPIE, RNC CHAIRMAN: George Soros is the No. 1 funder of efforts to elect John Kerry for president and so his positions are relevant to this election.

HENRY: Democrats were unapologetic, insisting they're just countering what they believe to be conservative propaganda.

SEN. HILLARY CLINTON (D), NEW YORK: I do know a little bit about the vast right wing conspiracy. Oh, and there were doubters.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

PHILLIPS: Straight ahead, a 13-year-old refuses to go down for the count at this year's spelling bee. Oh, poor guy. But yep, he came back. Maybe I wasn't supposed to tell you that. After the break, find out what was going through his head as he fainted on national television.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

LIN: Well this year's spelling bee was really buzzing, with tension, tears and fainting.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DAVID TIDMARSH, NATIONAL SPELLING BEE CHAMPION: ... O-U-S -- Autochthonous.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: You are the champion!

(END VIDEO CLIP)

LIN: This young man, David Tidmarsh, got the last word. He won the 77th Scripps National Spelling Bee with the word autochthonous, which means indigenous. The second place winner might want to forget about this, Askhay actually. Buddiga briefly collapsed while on stage, and he then got up, he actually got up, and then spelled his word correctly. Askhay also spoke on "AMERICAN MORNING."

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

ASKHAY BUDDIGA, NATIONAL SPELLING BEE RUNNER-UP: I can see when -- before I passed out, but once I hit the ground, my -- I regained my eyesight, so when I got up and I told myself I have to finish spelling the word. I didn't really care if I got it right or not, just get it over with.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

LIN: But he just got it. The spelling bee's director used a four-letter word to describe Askhay's performance. That's what you call true grit -- G-R-I-T.

PHILLIPS: That's an easy one to spell.

(STOCK MARKET UPDATE)

PHILLIPS: We're getting word now in from the Pentagon. Let's go to Barbara Starr. Criminal investigation, I'm being told, into the shooting death of an Al-Sadr loyalist in Iraq.

What do you know? What's the situation, Barbara?

BARBARA STARR, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Kyra, well, let's bring everyone up to date. CNN has learned that the Army has opened a criminal investigation into the alleged shooting death of an Iraqi, an Al-Sadr loyalist at the hands of the United States. This incident, we now know, took place on May 21st, when there was heavy fighting between U.S. forces and those loyal to Muqtada Al-Sadr in southern Iraq, around the Najaf, Kufa area.

What we know is that a vehicle, as the fighting was going on, a vehicle allegedly carrying Al-Sadr loyalists trite to run a checkpoint. They ran into U.S. military forces. We are told one Iraqi in a car that was trying to run the checkpoint or go through the checkpoint was not seriously wounded, but another man was seriously wounded and allegedly shot and killed at the hands of a U.S. military person.

The Army's criminal investigative command now opening a criminal investigation into this matter -- Kyra.

PHILLIPS: Barbara, do we know if this man, this Iraqi, who was seriously wounded in this car, was firing at U.S. troops?

STARR: Well, what we do know is that there was combat in that area at the time. The army CID will be investigating the precise details. They will be talking to people, interviewing eyewitnesses, trying to determine exactly what happened.

But the allegation on the table is that an Iraqi who was seriously wounded was then shot and killed by a U.S. military person. That, of course, clearly a violation of the rules of war, clearly a criminal violation, if after an investigation that was proven to be true -- Kyra.

PHILLIPS: Barbara Starr live from the Pentagon, thank you -- Carol.

LIN: Kyra, coming up next in our second hour of LIVE FROM, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld reacts to the resignation of CIA head George Tenet. We're going to tell you what he had to say.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK) 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 June 4, 2004 - 13:30   ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
CAROL LIN, CNN ANCHOR: A protest in Italy. Tens of thousands of anti-war demonstrators are protesting President Bush's visit to Rome. He's marking the 60th anniversary of Italy's liberation from the Nazis. The president met with Italy's prime minister and Pope John Paul II who's against the war in Iraq.
Iraqi police make an important terror arrest. The coalition says officers arrested an associate of Abu Musab al Zarqawi, the most wanted Iraqi insurgent leader. Police described the suspect as a known terrorist who's also wanted in connection with anti-coalition activities.

A warning today that al Qaeda may look to cause chaos in Iraq before the hand-over of sovereignty. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld says he believes the terror group will step up attacks in Iraq leading up to the June 30 hand-over.

Rumsfeld says U.S. intelligence has intercepted al Qaeda communications indicating the group believes it will have a harder time operating in Iraq after the power transfer.

KYRA PHILLIPS, CNN ANCHOR: The secret is out at the nation's spy agency. CIA Director George Tenet is leaving amid intense political scrutiny of that agency. Tenet announced his resignation yesterday to the Central Intelligence Agency's staff.

Some Democrats say the Bush administration is using Tenet as a scapegoat. Tenet says his decision to leave is personal. He discounted claims that his resignation has to do with intelligence failures involving 9/11 or Iraqi. Some highly critical reports on those intelligence failures are due out soon.

But is George Tenet the only one who should be taking the heat over an agency that has changed drastically over the years? We take a closer look at the CIA's history with CNN contributor and former Congressman Bob Barr. He served in the CIA from 1971 to 1978. Now, Bob, you said this was long overdue, why?

BOB BARR, CNN CONTRIBUTOR: Well it's long overdue because we've had a series of intelligence failures that can only be described as phenomenal over the last three or four years.

The agency has never recovered from the debacle of going back to the Clinton -- to the Carter administration. And then that was followed in recent years by the Clinton administration downgrading intelligence, putting limitations on it. The agency has not had the sort of leadership that it need with vision and a long-term strategy for many years now. And we're paying a very heavy price as we can see from what's happening in Iraq.

PHILLIPS: All right, well let's take viewers back. Let's talk about after World War II when things were looking pretty good when it came to human intelligence. Right?

Then Carter came in and brought in Stan Turner has his head for CIA. Is this -- what went wrong? What happened?

BARR: What went wrong in the Carter administration is they brought Stansfield Turner in who was a technicrat. And his philosophy seemed to be getting rid of the old guys running around the agency that went back to the World War II and the early days of the Cold War, people who knew and understood what's called intelligence trade craft. They understood communism. They understood the world. And replace them with a bunch of technicrats who just sat there and looked at picture and listened to signals intelligence with earphones on.

PHILLIPS: You are talking satellite pictures versus human intelligence and covert action.

BARR: They came enamored with technology. And no matter how good technology is, no matter how good the picture is it won't tell you the intentions of our adversaries.

PHILLIPS: All right, so then here comes the situation in Iran. You've got the shah, you've got the Ayatollah. Obviously the U.S. didn't show its support for the shah, the Ayatollah stepped in. What happened?

BARR: Well Carter bought into this notion the Ayatollah was a human rights activist. He wasn't. And what we lost was the greatest single intelligence asset that we had anywhere in the Middle East. And that was to use Iran as a base of operations.

We lost that. We lost countless individual assets. And we have never recovered from that because we've never paid sufficient attention to the Middle East and to these terrorist organizations that grew up in the wake of the Ayatollah coming in.

PHILLIPS: All right so we lost good sources in the Middle East. What about when Reagan came in? He focused on human intelligence. Didn't he try to bring the old school back?

BARR: Reagan did. And in the early years of the Reagan administration we saw Bill Casey brought in, who, again, understood from the old World War II office of -- OSF days. He understood all of that.

Unfortunately later on in the Reagan administration they got sidetracked by Iran-Gate and the Contra Affair. And they never really got back to focusing on intelligence to institutionalize the changes like they really needed to. PHILLIPS: All right, so George Tenet came in. He tried to get the focus back on human intelligence. Obviously we saw what happened with weapons of mass destruction, the Iraq War, lack of intelligence there.

Now looking for a new director of the CIA, you say it's got to be someone like Allen Dulles. Now you're taking us back. Why Allen Dulles. What made Allen Dulles so successful?

BARR: What made Allen Dulles so successful is he freed the agency apparatus from the day to day mundane operations, focused on the big picture and brought people into the agency that had imagination, that could look beyond the next day's headlines.

And he also brought in people into the intelligence business who were not beholden to a particular president or a particular party. And that's extremely intelligent to get the objectivity in intelligence analysis that has been lacking in event years and specifically in Iraq.

PHILLIPS: One final question. I said to you give me a couple of players. You said Tom Kean, Tom Ridge, Frank Keating. Real quickly, tell me why these three.

BARR: These would be very good people to President Bush to keep in mind because they understand national security, they understand that there is a difference between military intelligence, which has been very narrowly focused, too narrowly, and the bigger national security picture.

If you go to the military intelligence, we're going to see a continuation of what's happened in Iraq.

PHILLIPS: Bob Barr. It'll be interesting. We'll see if any of these players surface. Thanks for your time.

BARR: Will be interesting.

PHILLIPS: We'll be talking with you a lot more, I'm sure. Thank you.

LIN: All right, right now we're going to Asia, Kyra. Carrying candles and waving banners, tens of thousands of demonstrators filled the streets of Hong Kong today marking the 15th anniversary of the bloody crackdown on pro-democracy student protests at Beijing's Tiananmen Square.

This year's demonstration was made more intense, or more tense, by protesters anger over China's hardline stance against democracy in Hong Kong.

Well what happened in Tiananmen Square is something the world will likely never forget. Aaron Brown take as look back.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE) AARON BROWN, CNN ANCHOR (voice-over): The pictures, of course, endure, thousands of Chinese students filling the august Tiananmen Square during their struggle for democracy in a communist state. Many Americans barely remember it now. There was that styrofoam Statue of Liberty surrounded by milling students.

There were the stretchers and the ambulances lined up for the casualties. And on the night itself, armored personnel carriers and tanks of the People's Liberation Army arrived, some of them soon to be in flames, and that instantly famous image, a single Chinese student standing in the way of an advancing tank.

Fifteen years later, there is still considerable debate about what happened when Chinese soldiers surrounded the square. Many say that few if any students were actually killed there. The dead -- and nobody seems to know the real number for certain -- may have been mostly citizens of Beijing, killed as the Army swept through city neighborhoods in the hours and days after the students left Tiananmen.

The street battle for democracy in China was over in weeks, the protest crushed. And even now in China, the debate goes on, quietly, in the ways of the Chinese government, about whether what it did 15 years ago was right.

Aaron Brown, CNN, New York.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

PHILLIPS: CNN watchers in China are missing out on much of our coverage of the Tiananmen anniversary. Government sensors in Beijing have repeatedly blacked out the audio and video when we air reports about the anniversary of the crackdown. Take a look at what happened today.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED CNN ANCHOR: ... to commemorate the 15th anniversary of Beijing's bloody crackdown on the 1989 student-led protest. When the former student leaders of the...

(AUDIO/VIDEO GAP)

(END VIDEO CLIP)

PHILLIPS: Black-out. CNN is no stranger to Chinese censorship. You may remember in 1989 authorities in Beijing blacked out live coverage of the protests in Tiananmen Square.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well, the government has ordered us to shut down our facility, (UNINTELLIGIBLE). We'll have to shut it down.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: OK, the government -- our policy is the government has ordered us to shut down our facility. We are shutting down our facility.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

PHILLIPS: CNN broadcasts in China are available mostly in hotels and apartment compounds for travelers. Select government agencies and schools also have access.

LIN: In other news, Smarty Jones is a little more than 24 hours away from the biggest race of his life, but the fact that he's even a contender is a feat in itself. How murder, alcoholism and a near fatal accident paved this horse's way to race for the triple crown.

Plus, find out how this billionaire is heating up the race for the White House.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

PHILLIPS: Well a lot is at stake at Belmont Park this weekend. Horse racing fans could get their first triple crown winner in 26 years. Is the chestnut colt, Smarty Jones, the one to do it?

CNN Sport's Josie Burke is live from Belmont now in New York to tell us more -- Josie.

JOSIE BURKE, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Kyra, this is the sixth time in the last eight years that a horse has come here to the Belmont Stakes with a chance to win the triple crown. And the previous five have all failed, but many people are convinced that Smarty Jones will succeed. And they believe that, in large part, because they know what this young horse has had to overcome in his lifetime, and they don't believe that he'll stumble now.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

BURKE (voice-over): Smarty Jones remarkable race to immortality could have just as easily have been a journey to nowhere. Last summer, he came face to face with death, after hitting his head during a training accident in a starting gate.

JOHN SERVIS, SMARTY JONES' TRAINER: He just lunged out over the top of the front doors, and saw that daylight, I guess, and decided he wanted to get out of there, and hit his head across the iron bar across the top of the gate, and tore his head up pretty good.

BURKE: It was the horse's turn to experience the pain that lived all around him. Smarty Jones's original trainer was murdered in 2001. Afterwards, his owners, Pat and Roy Chapman, nearly got out of the business entirely. Today, Roy gets around the track in a wheelchair, supported by oxygen, weakened by emphysema.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE He's obviously wanting to be at the barn more and wanted to spend a lot more time with the horse. When you get a horse like this, you want to spend as much time as you can with him, and he hasn't been able to do that.

BURKE: On race day, Smarty's talent is handled by 39-year-old jockey Stewart Elliott. Elliott, too, could just have easily been elsewhere today. He's battled a weight problem and alcoholism. He's had run-ins with the law. Now Elliott is a key part of the team that is, against all logic, at the top of the horse racing world.

STEWART ELLIOTT, SMARTY JONES' JOCKEY: There's nothing to hide. Everybody's asked all of the questions. I've told them everything they want to know.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE; There are so many twists to the story, and it's gotten everybody involved, and nationwide, people have fallen in love with my horse.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

BURKE: Smarty Jones was out on the Belmont track earlier this morning, getting used to it, going around the one and a half mile track. We can also report he had a really good bath this morning, and he's squeaky clean and ready for what could be a very important day in his life tomorrow -- Kyra.

PHILLIPS: All right, Josie Burke, thanks so much -- Carol.

LIN: Well, the billionaire George Soros has made no secret of the fact that he wants to drive George Bush out of the White House this fall. But some of his recent comments about the Bush administration are raising more than a few eyebrows.

Ed Henry reports.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

ED HENRY, CNN CONGRESSIONAL CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): George Tenet's resignation was greeted with cheers at this gathering of 2,000 liberal activists already pumped up by the president's declining poll numbers.

HOWARD DEAN (D), FMR. PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: It's about time somebody in this administration resigned over all the misdeeds that have gone on and let this not be the first one culminating on November 2 when George Bush is the last one to fall.

HENRY: The left wing has energy and money thanks to billionaire George Soros who has already given $15 million to progressive groups and vowed to spend what it takes to defeat President Bush. Soros was introduced by Hillary Clinton and then issued a call to arms saying his check book alone will not carry Senator John Kerry to victory.

GEORGE SOROS, SOROS FOUNDATION: Hillary, again, said the right thing. That it isn't one person with money that can make a difference. It can only make a difference if there are people in the country who believe in those ideas and are willing to stand up.

HENRY: Soros, a Hungarian Jew who survived the Holocaust has said that when the president says you're with us or against us, it reminds him of the Nazis and he issued a broad indictment of Bush's national security record. SOROS: This is a very tough thing to say, but the fact is, that the war on terror as conducted by this administration has claimed more innocent victims than the original attack itself.

HENRY: Soros also equated the Iraqi prisoner abuse to the 9/11 attacks. Republican party chairman Ed Gillespie blasted Soros for making that connection and made it clear that if Democrats take the billionaire's money, they'll have to answer for his opinions.

ED GILLESPIE, RNC CHAIRMAN: George Soros is the No. 1 funder of efforts to elect John Kerry for president and so his positions are relevant to this election.

HENRY: Democrats were unapologetic, insisting they're just countering what they believe to be conservative propaganda.

SEN. HILLARY CLINTON (D), NEW YORK: I do know a little bit about the vast right wing conspiracy. Oh, and there were doubters.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

PHILLIPS: Straight ahead, a 13-year-old refuses to go down for the count at this year's spelling bee. Oh, poor guy. But yep, he came back. Maybe I wasn't supposed to tell you that. After the break, find out what was going through his head as he fainted on national television.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

LIN: Well this year's spelling bee was really buzzing, with tension, tears and fainting.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DAVID TIDMARSH, NATIONAL SPELLING BEE CHAMPION: ... O-U-S -- Autochthonous.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: You are the champion!

(END VIDEO CLIP)

LIN: This young man, David Tidmarsh, got the last word. He won the 77th Scripps National Spelling Bee with the word autochthonous, which means indigenous. The second place winner might want to forget about this, Askhay actually. Buddiga briefly collapsed while on stage, and he then got up, he actually got up, and then spelled his word correctly. Askhay also spoke on "AMERICAN MORNING."

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

ASKHAY BUDDIGA, NATIONAL SPELLING BEE RUNNER-UP: I can see when -- before I passed out, but once I hit the ground, my -- I regained my eyesight, so when I got up and I told myself I have to finish spelling the word. I didn't really care if I got it right or not, just get it over with.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

LIN: But he just got it. The spelling bee's director used a four-letter word to describe Askhay's performance. That's what you call true grit -- G-R-I-T.

PHILLIPS: That's an easy one to spell.

(STOCK MARKET UPDATE)

PHILLIPS: We're getting word now in from the Pentagon. Let's go to Barbara Starr. Criminal investigation, I'm being told, into the shooting death of an Al-Sadr loyalist in Iraq.

What do you know? What's the situation, Barbara?

BARBARA STARR, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Kyra, well, let's bring everyone up to date. CNN has learned that the Army has opened a criminal investigation into the alleged shooting death of an Iraqi, an Al-Sadr loyalist at the hands of the United States. This incident, we now know, took place on May 21st, when there was heavy fighting between U.S. forces and those loyal to Muqtada Al-Sadr in southern Iraq, around the Najaf, Kufa area.

What we know is that a vehicle, as the fighting was going on, a vehicle allegedly carrying Al-Sadr loyalists trite to run a checkpoint. They ran into U.S. military forces. We are told one Iraqi in a car that was trying to run the checkpoint or go through the checkpoint was not seriously wounded, but another man was seriously wounded and allegedly shot and killed at the hands of a U.S. military person.

The Army's criminal investigative command now opening a criminal investigation into this matter -- Kyra.

PHILLIPS: Barbara, do we know if this man, this Iraqi, who was seriously wounded in this car, was firing at U.S. troops?

STARR: Well, what we do know is that there was combat in that area at the time. The army CID will be investigating the precise details. They will be talking to people, interviewing eyewitnesses, trying to determine exactly what happened.

But the allegation on the table is that an Iraqi who was seriously wounded was then shot and killed by a U.S. military person. That, of course, clearly a violation of the rules of war, clearly a criminal violation, if after an investigation that was proven to be true -- Kyra.

PHILLIPS: Barbara Starr live from the Pentagon, thank you -- Carol.

LIN: Kyra, coming up next in our second hour of LIVE FROM, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld reacts to the resignation of CIA head George Tenet. We're going to tell you what he had to say.

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