To cspan2 on november 19. Next, roz chast, cant we talk about something more pleasant of down with booktv at Pepperdine University to discuss her book on saudi arabia. In the book she provides an inside look at the history and culture and politics of saudi arabia, which he has covered as a reporter for 30 years. This interview is a part of booktv college series. Now joining us is Karen Elliott house. She has written a book about saudi arabia, she has reported on our country for years and years. And before we get into this on your book on saudi arabia. , how did you become publisher of the wall street journal . I went from matador, texas, population 900 to the university of texas in austin from their to the Dallas Morning News for one year covering education for their Washington Bureau and i got hired there by the wall street journal. And i was a reporter and ultimately a Foreign Editor and president of the International Operations and then publisher of the wall street journal. Host how many years did you do that. Guest publisher . Host yes. Guest for years. Host what did you think of that . Guest it was fun but it was more fun being a reporter at the wall street journal more so than anything else. We were allowed to do such Great Stories and follow your curiosity. It was really a license to learn and it was a fabulous job. Why are we talking to you at Pepperdine University . I am teaching a School Course here on saudi arabia. The subject of which i wrote the book about and they invited me and i have never actually talked. But it was great fun and the semester is coming to a close here, but it was a lot of fun. Host what he learned from your students as a teacher . Guest well, they ask things and they clearly have a perspective that i dont have since i am three times their age. And so that is probably the most interesting thing, just seeing what the young people are interested in and the way that they look at something. Host one is the first time that you went to saudi arabia . 1978. When i became a Diplomatic Correspondent for the wall street journal. I have never been to the middle east and so that was the middle east that was kind of the hottest, even more than the soviet union foreignpolicy issues. And though i bought myself an excursion ticket for five weeks and went not realizing the wall street journal would actually pay for it. I went to israel and syria and jordan and saudi arabia. And my boss actually worked there and advise me not to go to saudi arabia because nobody will talk to you when i said i was owing anyway. And it is a country that intrigued me from the first time that i stepped foot in it. And so im definitely became captivated by the country and kept going back for the three plus years after that. Host is a female reporter, how are you treated . Guest two i believe it is an advantage to be a western woman in saudi arabia because you can talk to women and men and there are clearly some westernized saudi women and there are a lot of those that would not meet a man like you. Host why is that . Guest because men and women do not mix and conservative women meeting with men, theyre supposed to be meeting with men that are foreign men, they are not supposed to do that. Host someone is giving impressions. What is the most common impression that you get asked about . Guest 40 of people live on less than a thousand dollars a month and a lot of things are provided for you education wise and there are very poor people and it took me quite a young time in my life to find them. You dont want to walk up there and just not and then people would come back and say that they dont want to see you, but i finally did get into the homes of some people who live very poorly. Host were they saudi arabia and. Guest no, they were clearly poor people and a lot of foreigners working in saudi arabia because they basically want to work for the government. So 90 of all the employees in the or are foreigners. And so they are huge, about a third of the population but 9 million foreigners in about 17 or 18 million saudis. And so it is a very large foreign population and they work in very poor conditions for low wages and so there are moslems are not arabs and those people are clearly eager to have the jobs and send money back to their country because their country is even poorer than a lot of where these individuals live in saudi arabia. Host secondclass citizens . Guest they are secondclass citizens because you have a paper that gets you in and gives me a job working for you, and then you can pretty much do whatever you want. I have no independence abilities. And so they have had a lot of people floating illegally in the system and a lot of them have talked about this and pushing harder for those dead a very high Unemployment Rate among young saudis. Host comparable to do it issue in the states. Guest in size terms it is much bigger and a third of our population is not a legal. Supposedly about one to 2 Million People in the country and the total population of one to 2 million and that is still a larger portion than 11 million among our 300 million. Host what about the modern ruling family and had they come into the . Guest it happened in 1932 when the kingdom of saudi arabia was declared. But the people they ruled that kingdom had been talking about this off and on for more than 250 years and so they began in 1744 and they lost control and it came back and then the founder of this saudi state returned from exile in 1902. And it was organizing this and the kingdom of saudi arabia. Host how large is that . He had this to live to adulthood, there are still some of those boys that may have been old men and they ruled the kingdom from brother to brother but the extended family are least 7000 and this is part of the problem, but there are so many that they cant obviously just be in government. And so it is the favoritism and corruption exists in the country. Host have you ever had a chance to interview him . Guest i have met with almost all of the senior members of the royal family and at the time he was the deputy and so he was third in line and so there were a lot of princes and virgins in the tragedy in a profiled several of these founders who were just there and were different. And he runs the Tourism Industry with american sense of in space in 1984 the u. S. Ambassador to Great Britain and he went to school in lawrenceville and princeton and georgetown and they are all quiet and they can cover a wide spectrum and there are people who are more liberal and so kind of whatever the spectrum and divisions are. Host how firm is the control . Guest it is hard to see how they lose control. In you have all of the brothers children who think they should be caned. How you handled that, how the family handled that, i think will be very complicated at a time when extern olean internally theres a lot of pressure on them. Host Karen Elliott house, what is the Saudi Arabian role in their neighborhood . They like to think it is the big one that the saudis tend to i like to say they have one policy and is an insurance policy and they take it out with everyone they prefer to try to use money to solve problems. They are, aside from iran, kind of the only other major power in the gulf. And the u. S. Obviously had a long time relationship with them and saudi arabia is now the fourth largest, biggest defense spender in the worlds after the u. S. China and russia. Doesnt mean they are the fourth Largest Military power but they are the fourth biggest spender. So they seek to have influence but it is more quiet influence in my view. They do not they did send troops into bahrain this year to try to try to keep a sunni minority government in power over a shiite majority. They think they have more influence than they have. Host the ruling family a sunni . Why is that significant . Guest the sunnis are the Largest Group of muslims in the world and the shiites are the minority, but they control iran and the sunni control saudi arabia. That is the main thing, the saudi ruling family wishes to be seen as the spokesman for sunni islam because they control the two holy places, two holiest places in islam. But the sunni shiite sectarian battle is growing in the middle east thanks in part to the syria where iran is funding the syrians and the saudis and others are funding sunni fighters so you have a growing sectarian clashes across the region. Host how many times have you been there . Guest i dont even know but scores of times. Host do you think you are watch when you are there . Are you followed . I am sure one is watched if they want to know. I never assumed i was doing anything. Like going to the Old Soviet Union or israel, i never assumed, if people want to know what you are doing, they will no. So i neverno. So i never tried to hide anything. Webinar not allowed to drive but i take a taxi or higher, but you can take taxis on the street, get yourself a taxi, so theres a level of freedom for a western woman, saudi women could do that too but they rarely do. Host that is a change from the past . Guest in 1984 i arrived there and there was not i was not allowed out of the airport. I had to track down prince ba a bandar and he had to get me out of the airport because there was no one there to pick me up and in the 80s the country went through a very consumer period after the attack on the mosque in mecca in 1979 and the triumph of ayatollah khamenei, the saudi will family making sure they didnt go the way of the shot turned the country over to the religious fanatics and the kingdom went through a very conservative period in 1984. They were more conscientious about these things. Things have been liberalized since 2005. The king has talked about women should play a bigger role, he took women on his first trip to china. And he had is the one who is started all the scholarship, 100,000 saudis studying in the u. S. After that number went virtually to zero after 9 11. Women, saudi when men are allowed to apply for and get those scholarships and come to the u. S. He has tried to foster what george bush might call a kinder, gentler version of islam. Host as an ally how would you describe saudi arabia . Guest i think they are an ally despite the steep divisions that have come about since the president declined to get involved in syriac militarily. The militarily. The saudis are dependent. They are very dependent on the u. S. For their security. They know that not the russians, not the chinese, could protect them. Only we could in a real military risk to their security. They are more nervous about other kinds of risks to their security. Internal, iran commenting trouble, shiite populations, saudi shiite in the Eastern Province where the oil is used discontent, high unemployment. They worry much more about those kinds of feelings where they fear that alliance with america is hazardous to their health because very religious conservatives in saudi arabia did not approve of the u. S. As an ally for the country but i think the alliance will remain certainly for the foreseeable future because it is not an alliance of values but an alliance of convenience. We need stability in that part of the world. We dont trust iran, they dont trust iran, so we need to retain them as an ally and they need protection and there is no alternative to us. No matter how happy they are with president obama and the u. S. I think they have decided to quiet the criticism because it is like an unhappy marriage. If you dont have an alternative you stick it out. We and they may not be the warmest of marriages right now but we do i believe still need each other. Host why are they unhappy with president obama . Guest because they went into syria with the goal of giving iran a black eye because iran was supporting syria, they wanted to knock off outside and they fought the u. S. Would help from. And we were not doing enough in their minds but after the chemical weapons used in syria and the president saying i am going they crossed my red line, i am going to do something and then not providing any military help, they are stuck now with their flesh on assads nick and we didnt help from choppers head off and they cant find a way to chop his head office. It is not happy situation, and they blame the u. S. I think to a great extent. Host how close is the saudi royal family with the george bush family . I am not an expert on that. I dont know prince bandar was a member of george bush seniors family. He was constantly in their house and they in his and he loved it them, i think. He implied they loved him. I never actually asked george bush senior is bandar like a son to you but there was clearly a very close relationship there. And bush sr. Was president when the u. S. Did send troops in in 1990 to saudi arabia to protect them from saddam hussein, troops in kuwait to evict him from kuwait. At a time when they were very worried. Saddam hussein might move on in. That was the high watermark of u. S. saudi relations, 1990, when we defended them. There have always been ups and downs in this relationship and we are clearly in a down now and it will be interesting to see when King Abdallah dies, if his more moderate policies remain in effect in the kingdom, if they are accelerated in any way or if there is an attempt by the conservatives to clawback the little bits of progress that have been made on openness, opportunity for women. I think, given that the saudis are the highest per capita users of twitter and of youtube of any country in the world, not the greatest member but the highest percapita, 32 of saudis, there is the level of knowledge and information among saudis about what is going on in the world that never existed when i first started going in in the 70s or the 80s and in the 90s that war with saddam, they got satellite tv so there was a bit more. But now, every woman has a good idea what goes on in the rest of the world, not just in the u. S. But in the rest of the arab world. That has bred some compare the comparative unhappiness in young, more liberal saudis and comparative unhappiness among more conservative people of why are we tolerating these kinds of simple infidel things in our country. The country is much more in my judgment divided than it was in the 70s and 80s. Host what is the significance of King Abdallahs first foreign troops to china . I think it was deliberately done. They wanted to destroy us. I had innumerable saudis a to b. Dont you understand . We are all he is speaking english but in 25 years time if the u. S. Doesnt behave better we are all going to be speaking chinese. We have options. China is now a major buyer of alzheimers saudi oil, theres a growing relationship with china. I believe it was intended to send a deliberate signal. Host what is saudi arabias relationship with israel . Guest right now they have a great deal of similarity in their views of iran and u. S. Policy. And we are led down the garden path. And obama, is going to sell agree to a deal that does not stop nuclear weapons. Theres a lot of harmony in their views. There are rumors that they actually communicate, but there is no evidence. The king in 2002, endorsed the idea of a jewish and palestinian state. He is on record, a two state solution to the palestinian issue but they are not acting at pushing it. Host Karen Elliott house, there are a couple areas in the middle east that are modernizing and promoting tourism. Of lou dobbs becomes to mind, are the tpa are the saudis the denial of this . Young saudis. We dont want to end up in dubai. Some other saudis they look what they can do. Why did they get so much more than we do . Those countries fundamentally are not countries. They are barely citystates. Dubai probably has 300,000 citizens and the rest are foreigners. Saudi has 18 million roughly, 18 million saudi citizens. Despite the fact they have a lot more money spread over 18 Million People, they cant provide the life style for which people in the gulf are accustomed. That gets noted by saudis who look and say why cant we live as well as they do . For the more conservative ones, as they say we dont want all of those polluting influences during the country that they are allowing in the western universities, alcohol, movie theaters, in like that. Saudi arabia has tourism director now but to risen does not mean to you and me, as they want muslims in the village to the mechanisms to travel around the kingdom and spend the money and see things some muslim tourism, looking to get you and me or anyone else on a camel troops through the empty quarter. It is not tourism, the tourist place most foreigners would most like to visit. The holy city. If youre not a muslim, a lot of the reasons that would attract a fine to saudi arabia, is not possible in the tourism definition. Host your growing up in texas similar to a saudi experience. Nothing i ever did frankly was as fine as going from matador to the university of texas. And for me it was quite deja vu. We had 900 people, four churches. Religion was and people went to church and my particular family, we had no tv, no telephones, we were not allowed to wear shorts or pants because that is in decent, same as you this saudis would have. There was no alcohol in the county and certainly not in our household. It was very like saudi arabia and i went to church where there were no Musical Instruments which is another in saudi arabia you dont have Musical Instruments, you dont sing. Music is forbidden. We saying in our church. We could make a joyful noise unto the lord but not with a musical instrument. For me it was fascinating to there were no churches in saudi arabia so i did not go to church in saudi arabia. Actually i did, the first time i went. The u. S Business Community used to have a Church Services in the 70s and they probably still do somewhere. I was invited to the took me to what was called a welker service. As opposed to church but it was church. They called it a welfare service. Most of the people in the church were either americans or koreans. At that time there were a lot of koreans doing construction and korea is a country with a lot of christians a lot of there were a lot of koreans in that service. Host if you are jewishamerican would you be allowed in saudi arabia . Guest yes. They did not allow the Jerusalem Post cards to accompany obama on this latest trip when he went, but yes, there are Jewish Americans that get in to saudi arabia without any particular difficulty. Because in the profits time, jews and christians were seen as people of the book. They did not have much problem. And the saudis today, the really conservative religious people still have a much greater problem with Shiite Muslims than with christians or jews. We rank pretty low down but not nearly as low down as shiites because they are in essence prostituting and polluting islam. We are not believers and we are all believers but not in the right believe. Host finally, Karen Elliott house, on saudi arabia, you close with an analogy with the royal 747. What is that analogy . I said the country is like a 747 cockpit, failed with geriatric pilots, meaning three elder the rulers, princes who would be king and the rest of the plane filled with malcontents who would like to turn the plane around and crash it. And somewhere on board there might be a pilot who can safely land the plane but may never get a chance. The metapr