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In Beslan, Russia, More Grief, Anger and Shock; Founder of Aryan Nations Dies of Natural Causes
Aired September 09, 2004 - 13:32 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.
MILES O'BRIEN, CNN ANCHOR: What's happening now in the news. An extremely dangerous Hurricane Ivan storming through the Caribbean as we speak. It's already bashed the island of Grenada. Forecasters say the category-5 storm could hit Florida late Sunday or into Monday. Tourists and residents of the Florida keys already being told to leave.
On Capitol Hill, the House Armed Services Committee holding hearings today on alleged abuses at the Abu Ghraib Prison Iraq. At the same time, some eight retired military leaders are blasting the Pentagon probe. They're calling for an independent panel to investigate the scandal.
And a strong show of solidarity. Former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani is in Moscow, expressing support for Russia after a wave of deadly terror attacks. Giuliani says Americans will be thinking of the recent victims of the school massacre in Beslan while they mourn the victims of 9/11.
KYRA PHILLIPS, CNN ANCHOR: In Beslan, Russia, more grief, anger and shock. A wreath-laying ceremony is being held at the school today, while Russian officials scramble to deal with harsh -- or to scramble to deal harshly, rather, with terrorism.
CNN Moscow bureau chief Jill Dougherty live from Beslan now with the latest on a story we're all still talking about -- Jill.
JILL DOUGHERTY, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Absolutely, Kyra.
And, you know, as we were here today, talking with the people, this -- the school has really become a memorial. It's almost like a church for people who continue to bring flowers, and they're bringing water and also food, because that is something that the hostages were deprived of in their last hours by those terrorists.
So many people died, so many hundreds of people died, but today there was a bit of good news. And if you remember that video that was shot by the terrorists themselves, there was a little boy who was sitting almost alone on the floor of that gymnasium. He had his hands behind his back and he was standing right next to one of the key terrorists. Everyone wondered what happened to him. And it turns out, that he is alive. He was taken to a hospital here, and then we was taken to a hospital in Moscow, where he is right now. His name is Georgy Farniyev, he is 10 years old, and here is the story he tells about how he survived.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
GEORGY FARNIYEV, SURVIVOR (through translator): One of the bombs was right under me, and then we moved, so when they started to shoot, this bomb went off be, but it didn't do anything to me, not a scratch. From the gym, I managed to get out to the room where the teacher normally goes, then I went to the dining hall, and that's where a grenade went off and I was hit by shrapnel. I pulled a piece of shrapnel from the top of my arm, and then I went to the kitchen and I hid in the cupboard. And meanwhile, there was a lot of shooting and grenades, and bombs going off all around.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
DOUGHERTY: So a pretty brave little boy. He was then pulled out of a window by the rescuers -- Kyra.
PHILLIPS: Wow, brave, indeed. Oh, my gosh.
Jill Dougherty, thank you very much, live from Beslan.
Well, on the note of, I guess you could say racism, to a point, the 86-year-old founder of the white supremacist organization, Aryan Nations, has died of natural causes at his home in northern Idaho. Richard Butler established the group in the mid-1970s, as you may recall. And at its height, Aryan Nations provided a measure of unity to the organized hate movement.
So what's the current state of the white supremacist movement? Mark Potok of the Southern Poverty Law Center, a group that has challenged the Aryan Nations in court, joins us now to discuss it.
Mark, let's take folks back a little bit. We all, of course, know the name well, but remind our viewers how it all began, and a little history behind Richard Butler.
MARK POTOK, SOUTHERN POVERTY LAW CENTER: Well, Richard Butler was, once upon a time, an aerospace engineer in California, a guy who was actually pretty bright, made enough money to retire quite early, at 55, and wound up getting involved in a white supremacist theology, something called "Christian Identity," and he left California and moved to Idaho, to the northern panhandle of Idaho, because that's where he thought, you know, it was the whitest part the country he could find. There were no minorities around. And he began his outfit, which was called the Church of Jesus Christ Christian in its religious arm, and Aryan Nations in its political arm. You know, this was a straight-up neo-Nazi group, a group that, you know, had a great big swastika flag over their compound and so on.
PHILLIPS: Well, and you mentioned the compound, and this guy may have been living large for a little while, but boy, his life sure ended in a pathetic manner. Why don't you tell our viewer how you actually went after his organization, take us back to that time, and how it sort of left -- or left him kind of surrounded by a real failing system at the end of his life.
POTOK: Sure, well about four or five years ago, unfortunate couple, a woman and her son, drove by late at night, the compound, which is on a little dirt road outside of Hayden Lake, Idaho. They stopped their car because the son had dropped something out the window, picked -- went, picked that thing up -- it was his wallet, actually. Got back in the car, started their car again, which is a bit of an old beater, and it backfired, apparently. They drove on, oblivious to what was going on, which was the guards at the Aryan Nations compound, which is this heavily fortified compound, jumped in a pickup truck and tore after them and started shooting at them. They eventually pistol-whipped them, forced them into a ditch and then drove off into the night.
We sued the Aryan Nations on behalf of the Keenans, an ultimately won a $6.3 million judgment for the Keenans. Of course, they got a tiny fraction of that amount, but what they really ended up with, was they ended up with Butler's 20-acre compound. That was sold to a human rights group, which then went on and burned all the buildings down on the site.
Butler was given a house by one of his wealthy admirers up there, and lived out the last three or four years of his life in this kind of subdivision, at the end of a cul-de-sac. And he did end on quite a pathetic note. In his waning days, he had a batch of sort of teenage followers, really thuggish young men, who seemed to spend more time macing each other in Richard Butler's living room than doing anything about the, you know, the terrible problems of blacks and Jews, and so on.
You know, perhaps the sort of crowning un-achievement of his final days, was last November Richard Butler was flying down to a rally in Phoenix, Arizona, and was stopped at the Spokane Airport, because a woman he was traveling with was wanted on a bad check charge. Come to find out, the woman was somebody named Wendy Iwanow, and she works under the name of Bianca Trump, turns out she was a famous porn XXX-rated star. She had done something like 140 adult films, and amusingly enough, under many of them, under many of them, she used the title "the Latin princess." And of that's anathema to a Nazi.
PHILLIPS: Well, my final question here, you know, when you think of the church of Jesus Christ Christian, that he called this theology "Christian Identity," very similar to what we're see now with the war on terror, and sort of a distortion of the Muslim religion with these extremists, kind of a similar idea. I'm curious, the Aryan Nations, the white supremacist movement, are the numbers rising? Is this -- is Butler's legacy living on? Is it strong?
POTOK: Well, the numbers have been rising very slowly. I'm not -- I wouldn't call it a big burst of activity. But the white supremacist movement is -- although changing in many ways, is out there alive and well.
You certainly make a good point in comparing Butler's religion to kind of radical Islam. Christian Identity is a theology that any mainstream Christian would see as just grossly heretical. And basically it says that Eve, in the Garden of Eden, did not bite an apple, she was seduced by the serpent and gave birth to Cain, who was the first Jew.
So I mean, Richard Butler believed that Jews were biologically Satanical -- or Satanic and that all of human history was a kind of battle between the Godly white man and the Satanic Jew. And that is the message he pushed throughout his whole, sorry life.
PHILLIPS: Well, I don't think a lot of people will be missing him. Mark Potok, with the Southern Poverty Law Center, thanks for a look back in history there, appreciate your time.
POTOK: Thank you.
PHILLIPS: Miles.
O'BRIEN: Racing ahead, which candidate is pulling ahead in the battleground states? Some new poll results ahead.
And this one's right up our alley, a party for an alligator.
And NFL season kicks off tonight. "Are You Ready For Some Football?" But the real money is in fantasy football these days. Fred Katayama has some details on that.
LIVE FROM rolls on after a moment.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
PHILLIPS: John Kerry is in Iowa before taking his campaign in New Orleans later today, he led a discussion on health care in Des Moines, hammering at President Bush for spending billions of dollars on the war in Iraq, while medical and prescription drug costs soared. He says health care relief would be priority one in a Kerry administration.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
SEN. JOHN KERRY (D-MA), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: George Bush has had four years to lead America to the well and he hasn't even tried. I have a plan and I promise you, it's the first plan we're going to ask Congress to work on when I'm president of the United States.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
O'BRIEN: President Bush, meanwhile, making a pair of appearances in the battleground state of Pennsylvania today. CNN's Dana Bash is with the president. She joins us now with an update -- Dana.
DANA BASH, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well, Miles, you know, this is the president's 36th trip to Pennsylvania since he has been in office, a state that the Bush campaign thinks is so important he has actually been here three times already this month.
And the president did finish up his first event here and he had barely gotten started with that speech when some protesters interrupted him, actually interrupted him two times. And the protesters were escorted out. These were protesters, we are told, from -- they were AIDS activists from ACT UP. And one actually was even a Bush volunteer seen at a meeting last night.
This is something that happens to John Kerry, but rarely happens to President Bush because they do tend to screen the people who come to their events very, very carefully.
Now once the president did get started he talked a lot more specifically about economic issues, pocketbook issues, that he tends to in his general stump speech. He talked about some of the domestic proposals that he originally discussed in his convention speech, fleshed them out a little bit, issues like health care, savings accounts for health care, job training, and tax cuts.
Now Mr. Bush tried to appeal to the moderate Republicans who live in this suburban Philadelphia area, those -- many of whom voted for Al Gore last time. But he appealed to them to sort of come back to the Republican side on the economic issues, saying that -- framed it as a choice between the president who, he says, wants to lower government regulation, and John Kerry who wants to raise government regulation, and also raise their taxes.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
GEORGE W. BUSH, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: If you drive a car, Senator Kerry has voted for higher taxes on you. If you have a job, he's voted for higher taxes on you. If you're married or have children, he's voted for higher taxes on you. The good news is, the second of November, you have a chance to vote.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
BASH: Now when you look at CNN's new polling, you'll see why the president is doing this. He really does very well on the issue of terrorism here in Pennsylvania, with voters here. But on the issue of the economy, John Kerry does much better than the president. That is why he's focusing on these issues, also focusing on what John Kerry hopes will help him, which is the middle class issues, like health care, like job training and things of that nature.
Now while the president is still trying to stay on message, certainly there are question -- new questions about his National Guard service, the White House is trying to stay on message by trying to answer those questions as quickly as possible, release documents as they become available through the news media. And the White House spokesman today even put the blame squarely on the Kerry campaign for these new allegations being out there.
He said it's a coordinated attack by John Kerry and his surrogates -- Miles.
O'BRIEN: All right. Dana Bash with the president, thank you very much.
She mentioned that new poll. Let's tell you a little bit about it. The results seem sure to keep Pennsylvania near the top of the priority list for both campaigns. You heard, he has already paid 36 visits there, the president that is. A CNN/"USA Today"/Gallup poll conducted the day after the Republican Convention shows the two candidates in a virtual dead heat in the Keystone State.
But in two other potential swing states, the president appears to be pulling ahead, with a 14-point lead among likely voters in Missouri and an 8-point lead in Ohio. In Washington, state of, that is, also considered a battleground state, Kerry is now up by 8 points.
PHILLIPS: Celebrating the life and times of one little alligator, plus...
FRED KATAYAMA, CNN CORRESPONDENT: I'm Fred Katayama, LIVE FROM the New York Stock Exchange. Fantasy football may be just a game, but the profits that come with it are very real. I'll tell you all about it right after this break.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
PHILLIPS: Well, as we wrap up this hour, a special LIVE FROM birthday shout-out going on to an American in Madras, Madras, India that is, where Ally (ph) the Alligator is turning 2. Ally is the first captive-born American gator in India. She came to the Madras Crocodile Bank as a mere egg, and hatched after more than two months of incubation. Well, she's clearly doing well and could see -- well, I guess could soon see others like her as the bank plans to expand its captive-breeding program.
(STOCK MARKET UPDATE)
PHILLIPS: Coming up in our second hour of LIVE FROM...
(SINGING)
PHILLIPS: You remember that one, "No More I Love Yous," right? But we still love Annie Lennox. And guess what? She's here today, in the house. What's not to love? The diva is here. And Miles beat me in arm wrestling, he gets to do the interview. And I'm very bummed out, but you know, we love each other, and we've got to share, right, Miles?
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
PHILLIPS: People are leaving the Florida Keys and counting the dead in the Caribbean. We're live with the latest on Hurricane Ivan.
O'BRIEN: Picking up the pieces after Genesis. We're talking about that heartbreaking crash in the desert yesterday. NASA's administrator Sean O'Keefe will join us live in a few moments.
PHILLIPS: President Bush and the National Guard, is it an issue that will impact your vote this fall? We're reading your e-mails.
O'BRIEN: Some people want to use you, some people want to get used by you, and others, well, we just want to see Annie Lennox on LIVE FROM. She'll be right here, folks. We're looking forward to that.
From the CNN Center in Atlanta, I'm Miles O'Brien. Did we mention Annie Lennox is with us today, and that I'm doing the interview?
O'BRIEN: Did we mention Miles is doing the interview. But you know what, I'm taking her to karaoke tonight.
(LAUGHTER)
CNN's LIVE FROM starts right now.
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 September 9, 2004 - 13:32 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
MILES O'BRIEN, CNN ANCHOR: What's happening now in the news. An extremely dangerous Hurricane Ivan storming through the Caribbean as we speak. It's already bashed the island of Grenada. Forecasters say the category-5 storm could hit Florida late Sunday or into Monday. Tourists and residents of the Florida keys already being told to leave.
On Capitol Hill, the House Armed Services Committee holding hearings today on alleged abuses at the Abu Ghraib Prison Iraq. At the same time, some eight retired military leaders are blasting the Pentagon probe. They're calling for an independent panel to investigate the scandal.
And a strong show of solidarity. Former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani is in Moscow, expressing support for Russia after a wave of deadly terror attacks. Giuliani says Americans will be thinking of the recent victims of the school massacre in Beslan while they mourn the victims of 9/11.
KYRA PHILLIPS, CNN ANCHOR: In Beslan, Russia, more grief, anger and shock. A wreath-laying ceremony is being held at the school today, while Russian officials scramble to deal with harsh -- or to scramble to deal harshly, rather, with terrorism.
CNN Moscow bureau chief Jill Dougherty live from Beslan now with the latest on a story we're all still talking about -- Jill.
JILL DOUGHERTY, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Absolutely, Kyra.
And, you know, as we were here today, talking with the people, this -- the school has really become a memorial. It's almost like a church for people who continue to bring flowers, and they're bringing water and also food, because that is something that the hostages were deprived of in their last hours by those terrorists.
So many people died, so many hundreds of people died, but today there was a bit of good news. And if you remember that video that was shot by the terrorists themselves, there was a little boy who was sitting almost alone on the floor of that gymnasium. He had his hands behind his back and he was standing right next to one of the key terrorists. Everyone wondered what happened to him. And it turns out, that he is alive. He was taken to a hospital here, and then we was taken to a hospital in Moscow, where he is right now. His name is Georgy Farniyev, he is 10 years old, and here is the story he tells about how he survived.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
GEORGY FARNIYEV, SURVIVOR (through translator): One of the bombs was right under me, and then we moved, so when they started to shoot, this bomb went off be, but it didn't do anything to me, not a scratch. From the gym, I managed to get out to the room where the teacher normally goes, then I went to the dining hall, and that's where a grenade went off and I was hit by shrapnel. I pulled a piece of shrapnel from the top of my arm, and then I went to the kitchen and I hid in the cupboard. And meanwhile, there was a lot of shooting and grenades, and bombs going off all around.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
DOUGHERTY: So a pretty brave little boy. He was then pulled out of a window by the rescuers -- Kyra.
PHILLIPS: Wow, brave, indeed. Oh, my gosh.
Jill Dougherty, thank you very much, live from Beslan.
Well, on the note of, I guess you could say racism, to a point, the 86-year-old founder of the white supremacist organization, Aryan Nations, has died of natural causes at his home in northern Idaho. Richard Butler established the group in the mid-1970s, as you may recall. And at its height, Aryan Nations provided a measure of unity to the organized hate movement.
So what's the current state of the white supremacist movement? Mark Potok of the Southern Poverty Law Center, a group that has challenged the Aryan Nations in court, joins us now to discuss it.
Mark, let's take folks back a little bit. We all, of course, know the name well, but remind our viewers how it all began, and a little history behind Richard Butler.
MARK POTOK, SOUTHERN POVERTY LAW CENTER: Well, Richard Butler was, once upon a time, an aerospace engineer in California, a guy who was actually pretty bright, made enough money to retire quite early, at 55, and wound up getting involved in a white supremacist theology, something called "Christian Identity," and he left California and moved to Idaho, to the northern panhandle of Idaho, because that's where he thought, you know, it was the whitest part the country he could find. There were no minorities around. And he began his outfit, which was called the Church of Jesus Christ Christian in its religious arm, and Aryan Nations in its political arm. You know, this was a straight-up neo-Nazi group, a group that, you know, had a great big swastika flag over their compound and so on.
PHILLIPS: Well, and you mentioned the compound, and this guy may have been living large for a little while, but boy, his life sure ended in a pathetic manner. Why don't you tell our viewer how you actually went after his organization, take us back to that time, and how it sort of left -- or left him kind of surrounded by a real failing system at the end of his life.
POTOK: Sure, well about four or five years ago, unfortunate couple, a woman and her son, drove by late at night, the compound, which is on a little dirt road outside of Hayden Lake, Idaho. They stopped their car because the son had dropped something out the window, picked -- went, picked that thing up -- it was his wallet, actually. Got back in the car, started their car again, which is a bit of an old beater, and it backfired, apparently. They drove on, oblivious to what was going on, which was the guards at the Aryan Nations compound, which is this heavily fortified compound, jumped in a pickup truck and tore after them and started shooting at them. They eventually pistol-whipped them, forced them into a ditch and then drove off into the night.
We sued the Aryan Nations on behalf of the Keenans, an ultimately won a $6.3 million judgment for the Keenans. Of course, they got a tiny fraction of that amount, but what they really ended up with, was they ended up with Butler's 20-acre compound. That was sold to a human rights group, which then went on and burned all the buildings down on the site.
Butler was given a house by one of his wealthy admirers up there, and lived out the last three or four years of his life in this kind of subdivision, at the end of a cul-de-sac. And he did end on quite a pathetic note. In his waning days, he had a batch of sort of teenage followers, really thuggish young men, who seemed to spend more time macing each other in Richard Butler's living room than doing anything about the, you know, the terrible problems of blacks and Jews, and so on.
You know, perhaps the sort of crowning un-achievement of his final days, was last November Richard Butler was flying down to a rally in Phoenix, Arizona, and was stopped at the Spokane Airport, because a woman he was traveling with was wanted on a bad check charge. Come to find out, the woman was somebody named Wendy Iwanow, and she works under the name of Bianca Trump, turns out she was a famous porn XXX-rated star. She had done something like 140 adult films, and amusingly enough, under many of them, under many of them, she used the title "the Latin princess." And of that's anathema to a Nazi.
PHILLIPS: Well, my final question here, you know, when you think of the church of Jesus Christ Christian, that he called this theology "Christian Identity," very similar to what we're see now with the war on terror, and sort of a distortion of the Muslim religion with these extremists, kind of a similar idea. I'm curious, the Aryan Nations, the white supremacist movement, are the numbers rising? Is this -- is Butler's legacy living on? Is it strong?
POTOK: Well, the numbers have been rising very slowly. I'm not -- I wouldn't call it a big burst of activity. But the white supremacist movement is -- although changing in many ways, is out there alive and well.
You certainly make a good point in comparing Butler's religion to kind of radical Islam. Christian Identity is a theology that any mainstream Christian would see as just grossly heretical. And basically it says that Eve, in the Garden of Eden, did not bite an apple, she was seduced by the serpent and gave birth to Cain, who was the first Jew.
So I mean, Richard Butler believed that Jews were biologically Satanical -- or Satanic and that all of human history was a kind of battle between the Godly white man and the Satanic Jew. And that is the message he pushed throughout his whole, sorry life.
PHILLIPS: Well, I don't think a lot of people will be missing him. Mark Potok, with the Southern Poverty Law Center, thanks for a look back in history there, appreciate your time.
POTOK: Thank you.
PHILLIPS: Miles.
O'BRIEN: Racing ahead, which candidate is pulling ahead in the battleground states? Some new poll results ahead.
And this one's right up our alley, a party for an alligator.
And NFL season kicks off tonight. "Are You Ready For Some Football?" But the real money is in fantasy football these days. Fred Katayama has some details on that.
LIVE FROM rolls on after a moment.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
PHILLIPS: John Kerry is in Iowa before taking his campaign in New Orleans later today, he led a discussion on health care in Des Moines, hammering at President Bush for spending billions of dollars on the war in Iraq, while medical and prescription drug costs soared. He says health care relief would be priority one in a Kerry administration.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
SEN. JOHN KERRY (D-MA), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: George Bush has had four years to lead America to the well and he hasn't even tried. I have a plan and I promise you, it's the first plan we're going to ask Congress to work on when I'm president of the United States.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
O'BRIEN: President Bush, meanwhile, making a pair of appearances in the battleground state of Pennsylvania today. CNN's Dana Bash is with the president. She joins us now with an update -- Dana.
DANA BASH, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well, Miles, you know, this is the president's 36th trip to Pennsylvania since he has been in office, a state that the Bush campaign thinks is so important he has actually been here three times already this month.
And the president did finish up his first event here and he had barely gotten started with that speech when some protesters interrupted him, actually interrupted him two times. And the protesters were escorted out. These were protesters, we are told, from -- they were AIDS activists from ACT UP. And one actually was even a Bush volunteer seen at a meeting last night.
This is something that happens to John Kerry, but rarely happens to President Bush because they do tend to screen the people who come to their events very, very carefully.
Now once the president did get started he talked a lot more specifically about economic issues, pocketbook issues, that he tends to in his general stump speech. He talked about some of the domestic proposals that he originally discussed in his convention speech, fleshed them out a little bit, issues like health care, savings accounts for health care, job training, and tax cuts.
Now Mr. Bush tried to appeal to the moderate Republicans who live in this suburban Philadelphia area, those -- many of whom voted for Al Gore last time. But he appealed to them to sort of come back to the Republican side on the economic issues, saying that -- framed it as a choice between the president who, he says, wants to lower government regulation, and John Kerry who wants to raise government regulation, and also raise their taxes.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
GEORGE W. BUSH, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: If you drive a car, Senator Kerry has voted for higher taxes on you. If you have a job, he's voted for higher taxes on you. If you're married or have children, he's voted for higher taxes on you. The good news is, the second of November, you have a chance to vote.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
BASH: Now when you look at CNN's new polling, you'll see why the president is doing this. He really does very well on the issue of terrorism here in Pennsylvania, with voters here. But on the issue of the economy, John Kerry does much better than the president. That is why he's focusing on these issues, also focusing on what John Kerry hopes will help him, which is the middle class issues, like health care, like job training and things of that nature.
Now while the president is still trying to stay on message, certainly there are question -- new questions about his National Guard service, the White House is trying to stay on message by trying to answer those questions as quickly as possible, release documents as they become available through the news media. And the White House spokesman today even put the blame squarely on the Kerry campaign for these new allegations being out there.
He said it's a coordinated attack by John Kerry and his surrogates -- Miles.
O'BRIEN: All right. Dana Bash with the president, thank you very much.
She mentioned that new poll. Let's tell you a little bit about it. The results seem sure to keep Pennsylvania near the top of the priority list for both campaigns. You heard, he has already paid 36 visits there, the president that is. A CNN/"USA Today"/Gallup poll conducted the day after the Republican Convention shows the two candidates in a virtual dead heat in the Keystone State.
But in two other potential swing states, the president appears to be pulling ahead, with a 14-point lead among likely voters in Missouri and an 8-point lead in Ohio. In Washington, state of, that is, also considered a battleground state, Kerry is now up by 8 points.
PHILLIPS: Celebrating the life and times of one little alligator, plus...
FRED KATAYAMA, CNN CORRESPONDENT: I'm Fred Katayama, LIVE FROM the New York Stock Exchange. Fantasy football may be just a game, but the profits that come with it are very real. I'll tell you all about it right after this break.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
PHILLIPS: Well, as we wrap up this hour, a special LIVE FROM birthday shout-out going on to an American in Madras, Madras, India that is, where Ally (ph) the Alligator is turning 2. Ally is the first captive-born American gator in India. She came to the Madras Crocodile Bank as a mere egg, and hatched after more than two months of incubation. Well, she's clearly doing well and could see -- well, I guess could soon see others like her as the bank plans to expand its captive-breeding program.
(STOCK MARKET UPDATE)
PHILLIPS: Coming up in our second hour of LIVE FROM...
(SINGING)
PHILLIPS: You remember that one, "No More I Love Yous," right? But we still love Annie Lennox. And guess what? She's here today, in the house. What's not to love? The diva is here. And Miles beat me in arm wrestling, he gets to do the interview. And I'm very bummed out, but you know, we love each other, and we've got to share, right, Miles?
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
PHILLIPS: People are leaving the Florida Keys and counting the dead in the Caribbean. We're live with the latest on Hurricane Ivan.
O'BRIEN: Picking up the pieces after Genesis. We're talking about that heartbreaking crash in the desert yesterday. NASA's administrator Sean O'Keefe will join us live in a few moments.
PHILLIPS: President Bush and the National Guard, is it an issue that will impact your vote this fall? We're reading your e-mails.
O'BRIEN: Some people want to use you, some people want to get used by you, and others, well, we just want to see Annie Lennox on LIVE FROM. She'll be right here, folks. We're looking forward to that.
From the CNN Center in Atlanta, I'm Miles O'Brien. Did we mention Annie Lennox is with us today, and that I'm doing the interview?
O'BRIEN: Did we mention Miles is doing the interview. But you know what, I'm taking her to karaoke tonight.
(LAUGHTER)
CNN's LIVE FROM starts right now.
TO ORDER A VIDEO OF THIS TRANSCRIPT, PLEASE CALL 800-CNN-NEWS OR USE OUR SECURE ONLINE ORDER FORM LOCATED AT www.fdch.com
