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Violence Rises In Lebanon After Security Chief Assassinated; Lance Armstrong Stripped Of Tour de France Titles; A Preview of Tonight's U.S. Presidential Debate

Aired October 22, 2012 - 16:00   ET

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

FIONNUALA SWEENEY, HOST: Tonight on Connect the World...

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Lance Armstrong has no place in cycling.

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SWEENEY: Stripped of his Tour de France titles, Lance Armstrong's fall from grace moves up a gear.

ANNOUNCER: Live from CNN Center, this is Connect the World.

SWEENEY: Tonight, as cycling faces its biggest crisis to date with doping so common, we'll debate whether it should be controlled rather than banned.

Also this hour...

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

KOFI ANNAN, : I cry every day for the Syrians.

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SWEENEY: Former UN special envoy for Syria Kofi Annan tells us why military intervention is not the answer.

And from celebrity DJ to suspected pedophile, how this man is at the center of a growing crisis in the BBC.

Once idolized by millions of fans around the globe, Lance Armstrong has lost the seven cycling titles that made him a legend. Let's bring in World Sport's Don Riddell.

I mean, Don, in the end, was there any real decision to be made here?

DON RIDDELL, CNN SPORTS CORRESPONDENT: Well, there was a chance that the International Cycling Union would not agree with U.S. Anti-Doping Agency's damning findings. They don't have a particularly good relationship with USADA. But in the end, given all the evidence against them which is just so utterly damning, isn't it, I think you're right there really was not much of a decision to be made.

But the UCI wanted to make it clear that they'd had time to review all the evidence. In the end their president Pat McQuaid and said that he was sickened by some of the testimony that he'd read and so as you say no real decision to be made. Lance Armstrong now stripped of the seven Tour de France titles and banned from the sport.

And it was a difficult for the UCI, really, given that they tested Armstrong hundreds of times. They tested other riders hundreds of times and all of these guys passed these tests.

So the UCI had a really difficult day. And frankly something of an apology to be made.

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PAT MCQUAID, PRESIDENT, INTERNATIONAL CYCLING UNION: The UCI always had a commitment to the fight against doping, always had a commitment to try and protect clean riders and to try and get cheats out of our sport. And if I have to apologize now on behalf of the UCI, what I will say is that I am sorry that we couldn't catch every damn one of them red handed and thrown them out of the sport.

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RIDDELL: So the question, Fionnuala, now is what's going to happen to those seven Tour de France titles from 1999 to 2005. The UCI will meet again during the week and give us that verdict on Friday. But the Tour de France director Christian Prudhomme has said I'd rather you just didn't give them to anybody, put a line through it, because doping was so widespread during that era who can you give them to?

SWEENEY: It's really extraordinary, because you remember - I remember all the times that he won. And he was just an incredibly magnificent sportsman, but it seems he's got more to lose than titles, sponsors as well.

RIDDELL: Well, absolutely. Well, I think only the sponsors have now gone. Of course we had the big one with Nike last week, various other sponsors all kind of left him in the last few days. And then today the final straw, the sunglasses manufacturer Oakley, they left him behind as well.

So his future earnings, really, are gone. And you now have to wonder about his past earnings. He won $4 million in prize money with the Tour de France in those years that I mentioned. I think they're now going to ask for their money back. What about all the bonuses he was awarded? What about all the money he was given through his endorsements? What about all the lawsuits and the libel cases he won, those guys might now come back and say, well, we think we're entitled to our money back now. This could run into tens of millions of dollars for Lance Armstrong.

SWEENEY: Civil suits at least. Thanks very much, Don Riddell, for that update.

Well now that Armstrong has been stripped of his titles, new winners will need to be crowned, but that is tricky as Don was pointing out, because it also points to the sheer scale of doping in cycling.

Consider this photo of the 2005 Tour de France podium, for example. Here you see Lance Armstrong on the podium with second place finisher Ivan Basso on the left and third place finisher Jan Ullrich on the right. Now Basso was given a two year ban for a doping related offense in 2007, Ullrich was banned for doping in 2006.

The rest of the top seven in the 2005 Tour de France have also either been involved in doping scandals, or in the case of Michael Rasmussen seen here on the bottom right, been suspended for missing a doping test.

Some have argued that doping is now so common it should be allowed, that is the view of Harvard University's Yascha Mounk who joins me now from CNN Boston.

But the head of anti-doping UK disagrees. Andy Parkinson is live from CNN London. Thank you very much.

My first question to you in Boston would be why do you believe that there should be at least a lifting of a ban on controlled substances?

YASCHA MOUNK, HARVARD UNIVERSITY: Thank you so much for having me on, Fionnuala.

Well, first of all, I just want to say it's very clear that what Lance Armstrong did is wrong. As long as there are rules that ban performance enhancing substances in sports it's clearly very wrong for one individual to lie to all of the viewers and to get a competitive advance over his competitors. So we have good reason to be very disappointing with what Lance Armstrong did.

But I think we have to make sure that we don't misdirect that anger at people who cheat when doping is illegal into thinking that we should always ban these performance enhancing drugs. From my perspective, it's very clear through what's happened with the sport of cycling and other sports in the last 10, 20 years that we're never going to have a completely clean sport. And it's also clear that the distinction we make between what supposedly a performance enhancing drug and what are drugs that we allow like aspirin or like caffeine is not as clear as some people would believe.

So the simplest solution is to allow everybody access to safe drugs and the medical supervision, that way we have a level playing field which is what we really care about as sports viewers. And I think it will be a much better solution.

SWEENEY: Would we actually have a level playing field? Won't you have people trying to push the boundaries again?

MOUNK: Well, I think that if the main drugs that allow people to perform better were to be allowed and were to be controlled, first of all the incentive would be much smaller, because with other drugs would give (inaudible) slower competitive advantage.

So I think that once we dealt with incentives, no, that's not going to be the case.

SWEENEY: Andy Parkinson, presumably you're going to disagree. But could you ever realistically see the day when some kind of controlled substances might be allowed in sports such as cycling?

ANDY PARKINSON, ANTI-DOPING UK: Well, yeah, I think what we've seen over the last 10 years is evolution of what's banned and what isn't. And that takes into account firstly the health of the athlete. All right, here's a substance damaging to an athlete's health and secondly does it give a performance enhancement. And what we've really seen, the big evolution, actually, if you look at the United States Anti-Doping Agency's activities is that you've got governmental involvement and governmental ambition to try and clean up sport, which is something that we never had 10 years ago.

So really what we need to be doing is working together to find out what are the substances that we genuinely care about that do damage athlete's health and do change the level playing field that was spoken about before and really target our efforts in that direction.

SWEENEY: And do you think, Andy Parkison, what's happened with Lance Armstrong in recent weeks and the scale of it is going to allow the evolution of what you would described where people come together and decide should there be controlled substances allowed and what should be banned?

PARKINSON: Well, it's already been happening for the last 10 years. And probably the most positive thing out today is with the cycling federation agreeing with the United States Anti-Doping Agency, that's a tremendous step forward because now we can start to plan what does cycling look like post Lance Armstrong.

And I mean, we've got to take our hat off to the United States Anti- Doping Agency. They've done a tremendous job in presenting this case in a very thorough way.

SWEENEY: Yascha Mounk, if I could ask you, do you believe that Lance Armstrong still believes that he wasn't doping himself. But I mean, this is a difficult question, obviously, for you to answer in terms of speculation, but people might have different moral values when it comes to what they believe is doping or not.

MOUNK: Right. I mean, I'm not a psychologist. I don't know what exactly is going on inside Lance Armstrong's head. I mean, given all the evidence that we've seen I think it's very, very obvious that he did dope. And it's difficult to imagine - he would have to be quite delusional to really think that he wasn't cheating.

But I think this is a problem with performance enhancing drugs, right, that we're tempting people into this. We give them such strong incentives to cheat. And then all the conversation becomes about that.

And so I think that we should really go quite far in saying drugs like EPO aren't necessarily dangerous in themselves, what's dangerous is elevated levels of red blood cells. And how you gain those elevated level of red blood cells doesn't matter. It doesn't matter whether we do that through EPO or whether you do that through, you know, training in very high altitudes, and some cyclist have naturally high levels of red blood levels.

So I think what really matters is that we make sure that only those athletes who are not at health risk compete in sports. And that we should think less...

SWEENEY: If I may jump in there. If presumably we're talking about the kind of medical technology available, also, to determine whether there is something in one's system.

MOUNK: Yes, of course. So I think what needs to be - we need to have a panel of doctors who decide which kind of drugs should be legal in sports, because they're safe enough. And we should of course have tests for those drugs that are clearly unsafe.

But I think by limiting our attention to those drugs that are unsafe, we can make more progress. If we see over the last 20 years there's been hundreds and thousands of tests of athletes and clearly nevertheless people were able to dope despite this. So I think it makes sense to target our efforts at those drugs that are really dangerous.

SWEENEY: Andy Parkison, a final word to you. If you could perhaps address this issue of can medical technology keep up with any changes that there might be made or lifting of certain bans on controlled substances in sport.

PARKINSON: Well, I mean, again what we've seen from the Armstrong case is that testing and analytical techniques are only one part of the fight against doping. If we can encourage law enforcement agencies and other agencies to help, then we've got a much stronger ability to tackle doping both at the grass roots level all the way up to elite level.

SWEENEY: We'll leave it there. Andy Parkinson and Yascha Mounk, thanks very much indeed for joining us both from Boston and London.

And still to come tonight, a country on edge, the ongoing threat to Lebanon's stability.

New images surface of Fidel Castro. But are they enough to stop rumors about his health?

And a former TV presenter accused of sexual abuse, but did his employers know? All that and much more when Connect the World continues.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

SWEENEY: You're watching CNN. This is Connect the World. I'm Fionnuala Sweeney. Welcome back.

There's growing concern about Lebanon's stability with more sectarian violence erupting across the country. At least three people were killed in Tripoli. The unrest was sparked by the assassination on Friday of Lebanon's intelligence chief Wissam al-Hassan. The FBI has sent a team to Lebanon to assist in the investigation. Nick Paton-Walsh reports from a city on edge.

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NICK PATON-WALSH, CNN INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Beirut woke Monday to learn of a night of violence: clashes in the morning, too, when Sunni locals blocked a road and the army moved in. And here, nearby, a death in the capital on a sectarian fault line between Sunni and Shia areas.

These are the moments that Ahmed Cato (ph) was dying from his wounds. He and his brother were riding on a motorbike down this road when shots hit them both. Locals are confused about what happened.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: 15 minutes I called the emergency, I called the police, no one answers. Most of us are teenagers. We don't have any weapons. Maybe it's snipers.

PATON-WALSH: From where, the sniper?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I don't know. I don't know.

PATON-WALSH: Do you trust the army?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Yes.

I'm worried about something that this time he came to take the revenge.

PATON-WALSH: Community leaders blame a sniper firing from a nearby Shia neighborhood. There is anger and a thirst for retaliation.

But the army later said in a statement that the two brothers were armed, firing at their patrol, and it is soldiers who had shot them.

As locals try and piece together exactly what happened on this street, fears are of revenge and of further instability. Just this small neighborhood today waking up to the fact that Beirut's life may have changed.

Nick Paton-Walsh, CNN, Beirut.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

SWEENEY: Well, in neighboring Syria, one man who knows more than most about the country is Kofi Annan. The former UN secretary-general tells Becky Anderson what needs to be done to end the bloodshed, that interview in the next 10 minutes.

Meanwhile, investors have been waiting for Yahoo's third quarter earnings report. It's the first report under new CEO Marissa Mayer. And she's expected to outline her plan for Yahoo's future in the face of strong competition Google and Facebook.

Alison Kosik joining us now from the New York Stock Exchange with details on Yahoo's report. Those earnings just released.

ALISON KOSIK, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Exactly, just released a few minutes ago, Fionnuala. And this was an earnings surprise to the upside. Yahoo beating on revenue, coming in at $1.2 billion. But that did fall from a year ago. It's down 1 percent from a year ago. But Yahoo did beat on profit as well. It also said that there's an 11 percent increase on its search feature. But the reality is that even with that 11 percent Yahoo still lags behind its competitors like Google.

Marissa Mayer, the new CEO did say in a statement in this earnings report say that we are taking important steps to position Yahoo for long- term success and were confident that our focus on quality and improving the user experience will drive increased value for our advertisers, partners and shareholders.

But as much as these earnings did beat expectations, Fionnuala, it is kind of less about the earnings and more about how Marissa plans to turn Yahoo around. And we're going to get more details in about 45 minutes when the earnings call starts. And there's a lot - the spotlight is really on her since Yahoo has been through four CEOs in three years - Fionnuala.

SWEENEY: Four CEOs in three years, Alison Kosik, we'll be monitoring that story for us. Thank you for joining us from New York.

Now to Cuba. And Havana is setting out to dispel recent rumors that Fidel Castro is on the edge of death. New pictures were released over the weekend showing Cuba's former leader walking in a garden and looking at a recent copy of a newspaper. Their company a dismissive article reportedly written by Castro himself.

Patrick Oppmann joins me now from Havana, Cuba.

Have these pictures done enough to dispel the rumors?

PATRICK OPPMANN, CNN INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Well, Fionnuala, if you believe social media over the last few weeks you would have thought that Fidel Castro was on death's door, perhaps had already crossed that threshold, so imagine many people's surprise on Sunday when a Venezuelan official emerged here in Havana to say that he'd not only met with Fidel Castro, but Fidel Castro was alive and well, but that he had photos of Fidel Castro. And these photos were unique. They show Fidel Castro sort of in a Cuban cowboy hat, sort of Cuban farmer type hat, a very normal check shirt and then next to his wife Dalia who is rarely seen in any sort of official photographs that are released here and that Venezuelan official said that he and Castro had talked for five hours, Fionnuala.

So giving an image of Castro who is quite a bit fitter than many people had said that he was, certainly not as sick as many people had led us all to believe.

And then today here in Havana this article written by Fidel Castro lambasting the media and then these pictures showing Fidel Castro on a farm apparently doing very, very well.

In this article, Fionnuala, he said that he's so healthy he doesn't remember the last time he had a headache.

SWEENEY: All right, we shall leave it there. Patrick Oppmann in Havana, thank you for that update.

Now we're going to take a short break, but when we come back it is our last chance to face millions of American voters. So we will preview the third and final presidential debate just ahead.

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SWEENEY: You're watching Connect the World live from CNN Center. Welcome back. I'm Fionnuala Sweeney.

The U.S. presidential election is now just 15 days away. And with the race tighter than ever, tonight's third and final debate could be crucial. President Barack Obama and Republican challenger Mitt Romney will meet on this stage in Florida, focusing exclusively on foreign policy.

Among the expected topics, the attack on the U.S. consulate in Libya and the Obama administration's handling of the crisis, Iran's nuclear ambitions, and Israel's so-called red line, and the rise of China, including alleged currency manipulation and trade disputes.

Well, despite the foreign policy focus, both candidates are expected to turn the conversation to issue number one with American voters: the economy. Let's bring in CNN's chief political correspondent, Candy Crowley, she of course moderated the second presidential debate last week. She joins us now from Boca Raton in Florida.

I mean, this race really couldn't be closer. There is a lot at stake tonight, because of the polls.

CROWLEY: Yes. First of all, there's a lot at stake because those polls that we're showing in our CNN poll of polls now showing a dead heat. They are even. I would think that this would be slightly more troublesome for President Obama's reelection campaign, because any time an incumbent, that is someone who is already holding the office, falls before 50 percent that's never good news. But this is a toss-up any way look at this race.

Then you have just the closing in of the calendar. We - as it's three weeks as of tomorrow is election day. So there's not much time left to change the few amount of voters there are who haven't made up their mind. And so - and this is the last time that both of these men will have this huge of an audience. For 90 minutes to compare them side by side, so the stakes are tremendous, Fionnuala.

SWEENEY: I mean, Candy, are you expecting this debate to be as fractious as last week's one? I know it's a different setting. It's not the same kind of format, but what will both candidates be trying to do to elevate themselves compared to their performances last week?

CROWLEY: I think what we have that's different here - yes, the setting is different. They are seated. They are closer to the moderator, that kind of thing, but more than that what is this topic, foreign policy? And what do Americans want in their commander-in-chief? They want someone steady at the helm. They want someone who is cool and calm and collected. So I think you will see a very tough debate. I think they will criticize each other, but that kind of face-to-face and kind of going at each other I think is just a little too hot for a subject matter that most Americans look and say I want a steady hand there, I want a guy with a cool head. And I want somebody that projects strength without projecting that kind of fire that they saw last week in debate that remarkably was mostly on the economy where I think most votes really will be settled is on the economy.

But foreign policy, it's important to Americans to know or to believe that the man who will become their commander-in-chief has sort of a steely and steady gaze on it, not the kind of heat that you saw last week.

SWEENEY: You know, a month or so ago it was Barack Obama who was in the lead. Now this turnaround and fortune, albeit still a tight race for Governor Romney, is that solely in your mind attributable to the first debate in which President Obama did not perform well, if at all?

CROWLEY: No. I don't think it's all about that first debate. I think that first debate played a big part, why, because people saw a different kind of Mitt Romney and a lot more people saw a different kind of Mitt Romney than they'd been lead to believe by some of the ads that they've been seeing against him.

They saw a guy who was very articulate when he comes to what's going on with the economy, what he's going to do. And he was up against a president who really didn't seem at the time really much like he really wanted to be there or debate any of the points.

So, yes, I think it helped him, but you also have to remember that it's October. And there is always a tightening of the polls come October. So as you watch people who have been fluctuating kind of make up their minds, as you watch the pool of undecideds start to shrink, as you see the, what we call the persuadable, that is somebody who has already picked a candidate, but might be persuaded to go elsewhere, they begin a kind of - you know, be more determined in their votes. So you were always going to see a closing of the polls.

But the first debate, I think, really helped Mitt Romney solidify who Mitt Romney was on Mitt Romney's terms rather than on the president's terms and the terms of the adds that people have been seeing.

SWEENEY: All right. We leave it there. Candy Crowley, thank you so much, though, for joining us there from Boca Raton with your insight about what is going to take place tonight.

I know the viewing figures are going to be through the roof in America as they were presumably last week for your debate. Thank you.

And remember, CNN is your destination for full coverage of the 2012 U.S. election. The final debate between Barack Obama and Mitt Romney just hours away. And our coverage begins early on Tuesday at 1:00 in London. If you miss that, you can see a replay of the full debate, that's Tuesday night at 9:00 in London, 10:00 in Berlin right here on CNN.

Still to come on Connect the World.

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ANNAN: I think we should listen to the Russians and the Chinese a bit more.

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SWEENEY: The former chief of the UN calls for an end to the bickering over Syria. Stay with us for Becky Anderson's interview with Kofi Annan.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

SWEENEY: A warm welcome to our viewers from around the world. I'm Fionnuala Sweeney and these are the latest world headlines from CNN.

New violence erupted across Lebanon on Monday with at least three people killed in the north. Anti-government protesters were out blocking main roads and soldiers deployed in Beirut. The unrest follows the assassination on Friday of the Lebanon's intelligence chief, Wissam al- Hassan.

Lance Armstrong is being formally stripped of his seven Tour de France titles and banned from professional cycling. The head of the sport's governing body says he's sickened by the recent reports from the US Anti- Doping Agency that accuses Armstrong of taking part in a sophisticated doping program.

Barack Obama and Mitt Romney have one more chance to face off before millions of American voters. The president and his Republican challenger meet in Florida just hours from now for their third television debate. Tonight's focus: foreign policy.

Internet giant Yahoo has reported its third quarter results. Earnings beat expectations in the first report, and the new CEO, Marissa Mayer, reported adjusted profit of 35 cents a share, well above predictions.

Now, according to reports, the Arab League fears hopes for a truce in Syria this week are slim. Fierce fighting is reported around Damascus, Aleppo, and in Idlib province. The opposition says 102 people were killed across the country on Monday.

The latest bloodshed follows calls for peace -- and from peace from the envoy, Lakhdar Brahimi, for a truce during Eid al-Adha, the Muslim holiday, which begins on Friday.

Well, one man who has added his voice to that call for a truce is Kofi Annan. The former UN Secretary-General stood down as the Syrian peace envoy in August, saying a solution to the crisis was being thwarted by a lack of international unity.

Speaking to Becky Anderson from the One Young World summit in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, Annan said a truce on the ground in Syria could be what's needed to restart the peace process.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

KOFI ANNAN, FORMER SECRETARY-GENERAL OF THE UNITED NATIONS: Even a day of peace, a week of peace, would be helpful for them to breathe a little. I cry every day for the Syrians. I encourage everyone to accept - - and I support Lakhdar Brahimi's call for the truce. And if they manage to get it, they may like it and let it continue.

BECKY ANDERSON, CNN INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: How long do you give diplomacy a chance and when do you decide, as you did in Kosovo in 1999, that diplomacy is going nowhere and that military intervention is the only solution?

ANNAN: Syria is much more complex than Kosovo, and that is one of the reasons I believe we need to really get the council to bridge their differences, speak with one voice, and maintain sustained pressure on the parties and the countries in the region to pull back from the battlefield and negotiate a political settlement.

I think if you were to push for military intervention, the situation will become much worse. Already, the sectarian war is spreading beyond Syria.

ANDERSON: Russia and China will not buy military intervention, we know that. Are you telling me that you agree with their stance?

ANNAN: I think we should listen to the Russians and the Chinese a bit more. I think there has been a tendency in the simplistic approach to say that they use their veto, and therefore they are protecting Assad and are not interested in a solution.

I have sat in Moscow with President Putin and his team, and in a tete- a-tete with President Putin himself. My take is that they are not married to Assad as they have said, and they realize President Assad will have to move on.

Their concern is what happens after Assad moves on. They maintain they don't what a chaotic breakup. They would want to ensure that security forces, institutions, and others continue.

And from my point of view, the moment all the sides signed onto the Geneva communique of political transition, a transition with an interim government with full executive authorities, it meant they had really -- they've cone close. They could have built on that and still probably can build on that.

ANDERSON: You and I know that Qatar has called on Arab nations to intervene. There's a school of thought that says that that plan also has the backing of some European countries, notably the French, and also possibly the US going forward.

If Obama wins the presidency, does your gut tell you that the US could intervene in Syria, could back an Arab plan?

ANNAN: I can't say, but I would doubt it. The US has -- had two major wars in the last decade and is just beginning to pull back from Iraq and from Afghanistan, and I'm not so sure it's going to be in a hurry to get into a new one in Syria.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

SWEENEY: Becky Anderson, there, interviewing the formal UN secretary- general Kofi Anan.

Coming up after the break, a year after his death, sex abuse claims against one of the BBC's best-loved television presenters, and suggestions that some at the BBC may have known.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

JOHN SIMPSON, BBC WORLD AFFAIRS EDITOR: This is the worst crisis that I can remember in my nearly 50 years at the BBC.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

SWEENEY: One of the world's most well-respected broadcast networks is facing questions over alleged sexual abuse by one of its most popular presenters. The abuse allegations against Jimmy Savile date from the late 1950s to 2006. British police say they've identified 200 potential victims and are pursuing 400 lines of inquiry.

The vast majority of the alleged victims were teenage girls, but recently, there have been several reports of possible abused of young boys. Atika Shubert met one man who says his dream meeting with Jimmy Savile left him emotionally scarred.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

ATIKA SHUBERT, CNN INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): BBC TV personality Jimmy Savile was so beloved in Britain that nine-year-old Kevin Cook was over the moon when his scout troop was invited onto the "Jim'll Fix It" show in 1974. He spoke to us on condition we do not show his face.

KEVIN COOK, ALLEGED SAVILE VICTIM: He was almost godlike. Everybody -- he was so famous. It was just the best feeling in the world. I don't think anything else could have put me on more of a high.

SHUBERT: It was such an honor, his parents saved this newspaper clipping about the show. But Kevin Cook says all that changed when Savile lured the nine-year-old into a BBC dressing room with promises of a coveted "Jim'll Fix It" badge.

COOK: That was when he said to me, "You still want your badge?" And I said, "Yes."

And he said to me, "You want to earn your badge?" And I said, "Yes."

And then, that was when it happened. He put his hand on my knee, and then he started touching my leg. He tried to put his hand underneath my leg into my shorts, which he couldn't do. And that's when he undid my -- my zip and my clasp and pulled my shorts down, and then he started fondling me.

And at the same time, he then grabbed my hand and made me touch him on top of his trousers. And at this stage, there was a knock on the door. And then somebody walked -- they knocked, walked straight in, looked, saw us in there, and then walked straight back out. And then, that was it. It was over.

He said to me, "Don't you dare tell anybody about this. Nobody will believe you, because I'm King Jimmy."

SHUBERT: A threat so powerful that Kevin Cook says he kept it secret for more than three decades. He tried to bury the past and ripped this publicity photo from that day. You can still see where it's torn.

COOK: I just hated the man. I would -- I can remember the day that - - it was a few months after this happened, the actual show came on the TV, and I can remember my parents and everybody so excited to watch it, and I can just remember watching it, cringing. Even after all these years, I still can't watch the man.

I blamed myself for 37 years. That's the first thing, you do blame yourself. And then, I'm realizing that it's not my fault. And -- that was a relief.

SHUBERT: Jimmy Savile, once the face of the BBC, adored by fans. But Kevin Cook and other alleged victims say King Jimmy used his popularity and power to prey upon children, and they blame in part the BBC.

COOK: I feel hatred towards them, as well, because somebody must have known something. And obviously it was just covered up.

SHUBERT: Jimmy Savile is dead, and Kevin Cook has no hope for justice. But, he says, he wants to know just how much the BBC knew and when. Most important, if they could have prevented King Jimmy from abusing him and others.

Atika Shubert, CNN, London.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

SWEENEY: Kevin Cook isn't the only person who wants to know what the BBC really knew about Jimmy Savile. Last year, the BBC's flagship current affairs program, "Newsnight," began an investigation into Savile's behavior. Research was dropped after six weeks, with management citing editorial reasons.

Now, the editor of that show has stepped aside over questions about why that happened. There will be inquiries into what was known by the BBC and other organizations that Savile worked with. The British prime minister David Cameron said there must be a thorough examination of how the alleged abuses remained secret for so long.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DAVID CAMERON, PRIME MINISTER OF BRITAIN: The nation is appalled, we're all appalled, by the allegations of what Jimmy Savile did, and they seem to get worse by the day. And so, every organization that was involved with him, whether the NHS or whether the BBC, needs to get to the bottom of what happened.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

SWEENEY: And tonight, a different BBC program is due to look into why that initial investigative report was canceled. I'm joined now from London by author and media commentator Peter Jukes. Thank you for joining us. My first question, really --

PETER JUKES, MEDIA COMMENTATOR: You're welcome.

SWEENEY: -- is that I want to focus on the BBC in this particular interview that we're doing. Do you agree with the world affairs correspondent John Simpson that this is the worst crisis he's known at the BBC -- for 50 years?

JUKES: Well, the immediate comparison is with the Hutton inquiry and the crisis that engulfed the BBC in 2003 over a story which they'd got slightly wrong about weapons of mass destruction. That caused the resignation of their very popular DG Greg Dyke and obviously involved the early suicide of an arms inspector.

At that level, it's not as big a crisis. The external effects are not so great. But internally, I think it's a bigger crisis, because their journalists and management on the one side defending a story which they've got slightly wrong but, in essence, right.

Here, I think the BBC is in crisis because management has stepped away from a story which turned out to be true. So, we have a much bigger problem, that they've avoided -- they've missed. Nine months ago, last December, their story about Jimmy Savile, about their own TV star, they didn't report it. And the same story was reported by ITV and other media organizations. That is missing the ball.

SWEENEY: And -- and also, Peter Rippon, their editor of "Newsnight" has now stepped aside because not just that, but also corrections that had to be made in the blogs that he wrote, or the BBC put out, about what exactly went on.

And I'm reminded of the Profumo scandal way back in the 1960s when it wasn't just that he was sleeping with prostitutes, it was that he lied to the House of Commons about it. It's not here just simply the alleged crimes but the way it's being handled since it came to light.

JUKES: I think that's the thing. Editors make mistakes. It's a very tough job to be running all these programs, to check the legal checks, make sure don't miss the story, get the right story. The reaction, which in a way was to minimize what the story was about, to say it wasn't as advanced as the ITN story, which it was, was not a wise move by him.

And unfortunately, because "Newsnight" is the program that should be investigating this, you have somebody who should be defending the highest journalistic standards apparently not supporting his staff.

Now, we don't know the ins and outs of it, but it must be said that "Panorama," here's another program, another editor, Tom Giles, makes a very brave move, an admirable move, and decides to investigate the BBC.

SWEENEY: Well --

JUKES: And that program's coming out later tonight.

SWEENEY: Well, this is what I wanted to ask, because taking part in that program are members of the "Newsnight" team, who were doing this investigation last December into Jimmy Savile.

And I wonder, given that the BBC is a state company, one wonders when you hear the director general this morning saying that he hadn't seen the program to reporters, he couldn't comment on it. Whether this would happen in a private company where -- I'd heard the phrase today more than once that the BBC seems to be eating itself up.

JUKES: Well, I don't know if you know, but I'm an expert cited on the Murdoch scandal and the hacking scandal, and obviously these things can happen in a private company.

I think Liz MacKean and Meirion Jones, who are going to appear in the "Panorama" documentary put forward their case very coherently. And in a way, I'm wondering if a private company would run stories about itself quite so devastatingly -- in fashion, so coherently. The "Sunday Times" did not initiate phone-hacking --

SWEENEY: But their answer might be more coherent or cohesive, rather.

JUKES: You see, we call it a state-run company, it's not state-run, it's a charter-length, but yes. It's funded by the taxpayer. I think the -- there is incoherence here. It's a vast organization. And since Hutton, paradoxically, has become much more cautious. So, it's scared of getting things wrong.

And I would so rather than any direct cover up, from what I'm hearing from inside sources, it's a wider problem of a culture of caution and what they call compliance, which has chilled really good investigative journalism.

George Entwistle was not director general when this program was stopped last December, but he was head of vision and he ran the tribute section. So, he as an early DG has a lot of questions to answer.

SWEENEY: Many questions still to be raised, many questions to be answered. Peter Jukes, thank you very much, indeed, for joining us, there, with your insight from London.

You're watching CONNECT THE WORLD. When we come back.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

(PIANO MUSIC)

(END VIDEO CLIP)

SWEENEY: Recognize this? Well, you can meet the man behind one of the movie industry's most famous soundtracks, coming up after this short break.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

(MUSIC - JAMES BOND THEME)

(END VIDEO CLIP)

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

SWEENEY: The world's most famous spy is back. The new James Bond film, "Skyfall," hits the big screen this week with all the familiar features we've come to love: guns, girls, gadgets, and of course the infamous theme tune.

As we celebrate 50 years of Bond blockbusters, CNN's Neil Curry has been finding out what inspired one of the most memorable movie scores there's ever been.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

(MUSIC - JAMES BOND THEME)

NEIL CURRY, CNN INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): British composer Monty Norman was hired by the Bond producers in 1962 to write the score for their first Bond film, "Dr. No." All went well at first, but as the film's release date approached, the opening theme remained elusive.

MONTY NORMAN, BOND THEME COMPOSER: I suddenly remembered this little tune that was in my bottom drawer from "House of Mr. Biswas" called "Bad Sign Good Sign." So, I dug it out, and I thought, this is very Asian.

NORMAN (singing): I was born with this unlucky sneeze --

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP - "GOOD SIGN BAD SIGN BY MONTY NORMAN")

(INDIAN SITAR PLAYING MELODY SIMILAR TO BOND THEME)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE (singing): -- and what is worse I came into the world the wrong way round, pundits all agree that I'm the reason why my father fell into --

(END VIDEO CLIP)

NORMAN (speaking): I thought, this isn't right. So, I suddenly had the idea of splitting the notes.

(BOND THEME MELODY ON PIANO)

NORMAN: Now, the moment I did that, the whole feeling of the song changed. It was suddenly sinister and really -- it really worked, I thought, for the character of James Bond. Had the atmosphere, the ambiance, and the -- I thought, this is it. And I've developed it from there.

CURRY: With time running out, composer and bandleader John Barry was brought in to orchestrate Monty Norman's theme.

JOHN BARRY, BOND THEME ORCHESTRATOR: I can't do this. I said, "You want this?" I have to -- I have to just go off and fly, like I can fly. And you want it by Wednesday? This is Saturday morning. This is nuts. I haven't seen the movie, I've never read a James Bond book." I said, "I know he's a strip cartoon, he's a spy, you need excitement, whatever."

CURRY: Barry brought in rock guitarist Vic Flick, whose electric guitar riff replaced the original sound of the Indian sitar.

(GUITAR PLAYING JAMES BOND THEME MELODY)

VIC FLICK, BOND THEME ORCHESTRATOR: I was paid about 7 pound 10 shillings, which is about $15. I had no idea that it was even going to lead to another film because at that particular time, the Broccolis hadn't even gotten a distributor for it. And I think they were down to their last 50 cents.

BARRY: They then made me an offer of 250 pounds, OK? I went home. Maurice Binder called me, he said that the title is now running at about 2 minutes 20 seconds, or whatever. Recorded it, that was it.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP - OPEN TO "DR. NO")

(GUNSHOT)

(JAMES BOND THEME)

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CURRY: Fifty years and 23 films later, I'm in for a surprise as Monty Norman produces a rather ragged piece of music manuscript.

NORMAN: I started with the dum, dum, dum, dum. Funny enough --

CURRY: It's his original score for the James Bond theme.

NORMAN: Dum-da-da-dum-dum -- with that dum-dum-dum underneath it.

CURRY (on camera): So, Monty. This to me is incredible. It's a real piece of music history, and I want to know why this isn't in a frame or a museum. Tell me about it.

NORMAN: I -- kept that in a safe for ages, thought my grandchildren could have that sometime. What I think I'd better do is frame it. There's the original melody, and then it goes on -- da da da dee da dee da there. Where are we? Da da da, da da da, da da da -- and the chord with a question mark.

(GUITAR PLAYS FINAL CHORD OF BOND THEME)

NORMAN: In the film, when Sean is sitting at the gambling table and you see the lower part of his body and slowly the camera pans up to his face and he says --

SEAN CONNERY AS JAMES BOND, "DR. NO": Bond. James Bond.

NORMAN: And the music, the James Bond theme comes in behind him.

CONNERY AS BOND: I have no objections.

NORMAN: I think from that moment on, Sean was a star, the James Bond theme was imprinted in people's minds, and the whole --

(PLAYS JAMES BOND THEME ON PIANO)

NORMAN: -- James Bond franchise was up and running.

CURRY (voice-over): Neil Curry, CNN, London.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

SWEENEY: Now you know. And tonight's -- in tonight's Parting Shots, described as nature's fireworks, the Orionid meteor shower wowed stargazers around the world this weekend with a spectacular cosmic light show.

These pictures were sent in by CNN's iReporters. There, you can see what looks like shooting stars streaking though the night sky. The meteor shower takes place every October as the Earth passes through a patch of space debris leftover from Haley's comet.

I'm Fionnuala Sweeney, that was CONNECT THE WORLD, thanks for watching. The world headlines are up next after this short break.

END