So they didnt know they were used to working with this systems in must heavier gravity how these fluid would settle down and stay settled. This is thunder concern. So buzz is there playing like a piano to get everything settled; and it worked out better than they anticipated because they told us a big lie. They said, when they first land we are going to give them fourhour rest and sleep period. And i said, you go all that way and touch down on the first place other than earth, you want to get the hell on the moon as soon as you can and grab at least a handful of dirt, and when i told neil that, he laughed and said youre absolutely right. We wanted to get out host but the sleep period was large lay planning. Guest to keep the press from speculating on, theyve got problems here and this and that and playing up these stories. Thats why they used that ruse. I did a story about what you didnt know about the map walk in 2008 or township, and we put it on msnbc. Com. Two million hits. Still a record. Of course, today, with so many web sites out there, you never do that again. But it is still a rock, because they came back and read that story that we did, and got out there and what you didnt know. Because we had other things, too. Were down to four minutes, and i have to ask this question. How did he deal with his fame . Obviously some people thought it was better that armstrong went out first because he might have dealt with it better, but it was hard thing to for them, with his personality to for a while to be most famous person on earth. Guest thats true. He was totally dedicated. His family knew and supported him. Family was very important to neil. He was trusted all the way down the line to be the father he was, but its just like he went out and flew an x15 mission shortly after theyre buried karen ann, and janet, im told i dont know for a fact that janet resented it, but im the same type of person. I dont know about you. If i have something to do, a job to do, and i lose a Family Member and this has happened, dont need to sit around and grieve for two or three weeks. I have to get back to work. Thats how he was. Getting back on the job and taking care of things because he was devoted so much to what he did and wanted to make sure he got everything right. He used to say, dont brag about what you can do, show them what you can do. And he was doing this; it was this type of work ethic that they were so familiar with, they felt like he was the guy for the job. Now, lets say he had to abort his landing. They had a great guy, pete conrad, right behind him, that could handle it because they would have learned that much more. The only real problem they had going down was a 1201 and a 1203, a commuter host program alarm. Guest when m. I. T. Designed the computers, they had two flying control systems, the primary and emergency, and so, anyway, they said, you can only run one. And buzz looked at the thing and said, this is stupid. If i have to switch from primary to emergency, they have to know where we are to go live so i have to run both and that was executive overload, and it turned him caused alarms coming out. They went ahead and went in and landed. I. Host he wasnt very comfortable with being famous afterwards. Guest oh, no. Host he tried various things. He was a professor and also had been on the challenger investigation. Guest but he was happy on his dairy farm. He was a smalltown, 6,000 people farm boy. Thats one of the reasons why i became a friend with him. I was smalltown boy. John glenn was the same way. We were all kind of close together, doing thingsbut we wouldnt biersch werent biersch drink drinking buddies, but a lot of times neil and i would wine up going to willards in cocoa beach and have a couple of drinks and sit there, and we talk about the things that generally smalltown people mike collins was a metropolitan guy there, and he couldnt believe people could live on the farm with cows. He neil cooperate believe people lived in a city and rubbing elbows all the time. Host eni video hearing your stories about neil armstrong. Guest thank you. People should know that who you are as curator at the smithsonian. Its been a privilege. Thank you for the interview. Host thank you. That was afterwoods, booktvs Signature Program in which authors are interviewed by journalist us, Public Policymakers, legislators and others familiar with their material. Afterwards you can watch afterwords online. Going booktv. Org and click on after words on the upper right side of the payment. Next, Karen Elliott house, to discuss her book on saudi arabia. An inside look at saudi arabia. This interview is part of booktvs College Series and is 40 minutes long. Now joining us on booktv, Karen Elliott house. Shes written a book about saudi arabia, studied, reported on that country for years and years. But before we get into the book on saudi arabia, Karen Elliott house, how did you get from texas to become publisher of the wall street journal . What was your route . Guest i went from matador, texas, population 900 to the university of texas in austin, from there to the Dallas Morning News for one year, covering education, and then their Washington Bureau, and i got hired there by the wall street journal, and was a reporter, and then ultimately Foreign Editor, and then 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 four years. Host what did you think of that . Guest it was a lot of fun but its more fun being a reporter than anything else at the wall street journal warm, in my view. Because we were allowed to do such great stories, take off and follow your curiosity. It wases really license to learn being a reporter at the journal. It wases a fabulous job. Host why are we talking to you at Pepperdine University . Because im actually teaching a course out here in the school of Public Policy on saudi arabia. A subject about which i wrote the book and they invited me to teach, and i have never actually taught but it was great fun. The semester is coming to a close here pretty soon, but it was a lot of fun. Host what did you learn as a teacher from your students . Guest they asked things they clearly have a perspective i dont have, since im three times their age. So thats probably most interesting thing, just seeing what young people are interested in, and the way they look at something. Host when is the first time you went to saudi arabia. Guest 1978, when i became Diplomatic Correspondent for the online online the wall street journal. I had never been to the middle east and sadat had just been to jerusalem and the middle east was the hottest even more than the soviet union so i bought myself an excursion ticket for five weeks, and went to not realizing that wall street journal would actually pay for better went to israel, egypt, syria, jordan, and saudi arabia. And my boss, the Foreign Editor i actually worked in the Washington Bureau but the Foreign Editor advised me, dont go to saudi arabia, nobody will talk to you. I said, im going anyway. And the country intrigued me from the first time i set foot in it. I actually did get to see three ministers on the visit in three days, which is a higher ratio of top interviews than one normally gets. So i really became captivated by the country and kept going back for the last 30plus years. Host as a female reporter how were you treated . Guest i believe its an advantage to be a western woman in saudi arabia, because you can talk to women and men, and it is there are clearly some westernized saudi women that would be happy to meet blaine like you, but there are a lot of women who obviously would not meet a man like you. Host why . Guest because men and women dont mix, and certainly not women, conservative women meeting with men theyre not supposed to be meeting with men that are not immediate relatives, and they certainly wouldnt meet with a foreign man with whom they had were not related. Host Karen Elliott house, one of the impressions that some people have of saudi arabia is that everybody its vastly wealthy. Guest we have a lot of impressions of saudi arabia that are not true and thats definitely one of them. There is a lot of poverty there. 40 of people live on less than a thousand dollars a month. A lot of things are provided for you, education, health care, but there are very poor people. It took me quite a while to find them because they you dont just walk up to somebodys door and knock. And people who would volunteer to take me, would then come back and say, they dont want to see you. But i finally did get into the homes of some people who lived very poorly. Host were they saudis or guest theyre clearly poor people who saudis who there are a lot of foreigner ins working in saudi arainarch because saudis basically want to work for the government, and so 90 of all the employees in the private sector are foreigners. So there is a huge about a third of the population is not a third nine million foreigners and about 1718 million saudis. So, its a very large foreign population, and they work, many of them in very poor conditions for low wages, but if youre from bangladesh, the Largest Groups of employees are from bangladesh, india, pakistan. So theyre muslims. But not arab. And those people are clearly eager to have the jobs and send money back to their country because their countries are even poorer than the life in saudi arabia. Host secondclass citizens. Guest they are secondclass citizens because you dont 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 with me. I have no independent ability to get another job so they have had a lot of people floating illegally in the system, and this past year, the government has spent a lot of time trying to get eject some of these people that are there illegally from the country, and push harder for getting saudis to take jobs because theres also a very high Unemployment Rate among young saudis. Host comparable to the illegal immigration issue here guest theirs . Host yes. Guest in size terms its much bigger. Anr third of our population is not i mean a third of theirs is not illegal. Theyre supposedly about one to two Million People in the country illegally. So out of a total population of 27 million, one to two million is but thats still a larger portion than 11 million among our, what, 300 Million People. Host Karen Elliott house, when did the modern saudi arabia come into being and the modern ruling family . Guest the modern saudi arabia came into being in 1932, when the kingdom of saudi arabia was declared, but the people who ruled that kingdom had been ruling arabia off and on for more than 250 years. So they began in 1744. Then lost control, came back, lost control again, in 1880s, and then the founder of this saudi state returned in from compile in 1902, and spent 30 years in a civil war in saudi arabia, suppressing and organizing the country into what is now the kingdom of saudi arabia. Host how large is that ruling family . Guest he had 44 sons by 22 wives. And 36 of those lived to adulthood. There are still some of those boys and they have men, old men, and they have ruled the kingdom from brother to brother since he died, but they the extended family, at least 7,000 princes and this is part of the problem for the country, there are so many. They cant obviousesly just be in government. So theyre now like kudzu in tennessee, theyre in everything. And the favoritism corruption is a problem for the country. Host have the sauds ever met with you . Guest ive met almost all of the senior members of the royal family, and many of the younger people, but ive met with king abdul King Abdullah. At the time he was not the king. He was deputy crown prince so third in line. I met the current crown prince, and the two that have predeceased abdullah, but there are a lot of princes and a lot of divergents in the family, and one of the things i tried to do in the book is just profile four of these grandsons of the founder, people in their 50s and 40s, to 60s, who are just very different, a businessman, a religious prince, a man who runs their tourism industry, that the americans sent up in space in 1984, and prince turkey basil, the saudi ambassador to the u. S. And Great Britain and went to school in lawrenceville and princeton and georgetown and very knows this country very well. Theyre all quite different. So the family can cover a wide spectrum. There are people in the country who are very conservative. There are princes who are very conservative. There are people in the country who are more liberal. There are princes who are more liberal. So, kind of whatever the spectrum and divisions in the country, it exists in family as well. Host how firm is their control . Guest well, i write in the book, it is very hard to see how they lose control because they have they do not, unluke the Old Soviet Union, they dont rule by brutality. They prefer to buy and bribe and cajole people, but they are facing far more difficult problems internally and externally in the neighborhood, iran, syria, egypt, turkey. Theyre becoming its a nasty neighborhood they live in, and internally the kick dom is more divided and, to me, what makes the most this moment in time most vulnerable, is that they the old band of brothers is dying off, the king is 90 or 91. The crown prince is 78. Is the youngest of that set of brothers, and he is 69. c so, they are going to have to make a generational change, and that means you have all of the brothers children, who think they should be king. So, how you handle that, how the family handles that, i think will be very complicated at a time when externally and internally theres a lot of pressure on them. Host Karen Elliott house, whats the Saudi Arabian role in their neighborhood . Guest well, they like to think its a big one, but the saudis tend to i like to say they have one policy and its 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 on the gulf, and the u. S. Obviously has had a longtime relationship with them and saudi arabia is now the fourth largest fourth biggest defense spender in the world, after the u. S. , china, and russia. It doesnt mean they are the fourth Largest Military power, but they are the fourth biggest spender. So, they seek to have influence but its more quiet influence, in my view. They did send troops into bahrain this year to try to two years ago to try to keep a sunni minority government in power over a shia majority. But they seek to have more influence than i think they have, is in a word. Host the rue ruling family sunni . Guest they are. Host why is that significant . Guest well, the sunnies are the Largest Group of muslims in the world, and the shia are the minority, but the shia control iran and the sunni control saudi arabia, and so 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 in two holiest places in islam, but the sunnishia sectarian battle is growing in the middle east, thanks in part to syria, where iran is funding the syrians and the saudis and others are funding the sunni fighters there. So, you have a growing sectarian clash across the whole region. Host how many times have you been there . Guest i dont even know the scores of times. Host do you think youre watched when youre there . Are you followed . Guest im sure one is watched. If they want to know i mean, i never assumed i was doing anything its like going to the Old Soviet Union or to israel. I never assume that, if people want to know what youre doing, they will know. So, i never tried to hide anything. I you obviously because women are not allowed to drive in saudi arabia, i am either taking a taxi or hiring a hotel car or but you can now take taxis. You can just walk out on the street and get yourself a taxi so there is a level of freedom again for a western woman. A saudi woman do that, too but they rarely do. Host that a change from the past . Guest yeah in 1984 i arrived there in and was not allowed out of the airport. I had to track down prince bandar, the ambassador in washington, who had given me the visa, and he that to get them to let me out of the airport because there was no one there to pick me up, and in the 80 thursday the country went through a very conservative period after the attack on the mosque in mecca in 1979, and the triumph of hoe iran and didnt want to go the way of the shah and turned the country over almost to the religious fanatics and the kingdom went through a very conservative period. So in 1984 they were more con shen sunday about con shen sunday about these things. This king has libballized things since he became king in 2005. He talk about women should play a bigger role. He took women on his first foreign trip, which was to china, by the i would, by the way, and he is the one who start all the scholarships that have 100,000 saudis studying in the u. S. Now, after that number went virtually to zero after 9 11. Saudi women are allowed to apply for and get those scholarships and come to the u. S. So there is 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 deep divisions that have come about since the president declined to get involved in syria militarily. The saudis are dependent, so if you limit me to one word, i would say use that word, theyre 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. I think they are more nervous about other kinds of risks to their security, internal, iran fomenting trouble, shia population, saudi, shias in the Eastern Province where the oil is. Youth discontent. High unemployment. I think they worry much more, actually, about those kind of things, where they fear that alliance with america is hazardous to their health because the very religious conservatives in saudi arabia do 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 its not an alliance of values. Its 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. So no matter how unhappy they are with president obama and the u. S. , i think they have decided to quiet the criticism because its like an unhappy marriage. If you dont have an alternative, you stick it out. So, we and they may not be the warmest of marriages ruth now but we do right now but we do, 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, so they wanted to knock off assad, and they thought the u. S. Would help them, and we were not doing enough in their mind, butn÷< afternr the chemical weapons use in syria, and the president saying, i am going to they crossed my red line, im going to do something, and then not providing any military help. They are stuck now with their foot on assads neck, and we didnt help them chop his head off, and they cant find a way to chop his head off. So, its not a happy situation for them, and they blame the u. S. , i think, to a great extent. Host how close is the saudi royal family with the bush family here in the states . Guest i dont im not an expert on that. I mean, know prince bandar was like a member of bush seniors family. He was constantly in their house and they in his, and he told he loved them, i think, he implied they loved him. Ive never actually asked george bush, sr. , is bandar like a son to you . But there was clearly a very close relationship. And bush, sr. Was president when the u. S. Did send troops in 1990 to saudi arabia, to protect them from Saddam Husseins troops in kuwait and to evict him from kuwait, at a time when they were very worried Saddam Hussein might move on in. So, that was the high watermark of u. S. Saudi real relations, clearly, 1990, when we defended them and there have always been ups and downs in this relationship, and were clear through in a down now, and it will be interesting to see when King Abdullah dies, if his more moderate policies remain in effect in the kingdom. If theyre accelerated in any way or if there is a an attempt by the conservatives to claw back the little bits of progress that have been made on openness, opportunity, for women. Among the more liberal studies soon the great deal of love comparative among conservative people why are we a tolerating the use sinful infidel things in our country . The country is much more in my judgment, a divided then it was in the 70s and 80s. Host was and is significant case of still love first trip was to do china . I think it was deliberately done. I had innumerable saudis say to me dont you understand were all here speaking english but did 25 years if the west is not better we will all speak chinese. We have options. And china is no a major buyer of saudi oil and it is a growing relationship with china is so i think it was intended to send a deliberate signal. Host what is saudi arabia is relationship with israel . Eightyone right now they have a great deal of love similarity in their views of iran and of u. S. Policy toward iran. With the saudis and israelis believe we are being led down the garden path by the iranians and obama is naive and will agree to set a deal that does not stop the Nuclear Weapons so there are rumors that they communicate but there is no evidence. In 2002 the idea to endorse a jewish and palestinian state but they are not active to push its. There are a couple of areas promoting tourism. Are they keeping an eye on this . They dont want to end the plight catarrh or of rajavi ordered to by. Others say look at what they can do. Both fundamentally are not countries but barely citystates and as 3,000 citizens and the rest are foreigners but saudi has 80 million roughly. So despite the fact they have more money they cannot provide a the lifestyle to which they are accustomed to and that gets noticed by saudis to say why cant we live as well as they do . And conservative to say we dont want those to influence us for what they allow in their Western University like alcohol. Saudi arabia has a tourism director it now but tourism does not mean what it would to you and me. They want to muslims to come to the annual pilgrimages. To than traveled around the kingdom to spend money and see things. Muslim tourism. Not looking to get you or me but for me it was like deja vu. We had 900 people for churches, and build a Movie Theater so religion is what we did for socialization. But people go to church and in my particular family no telephone we could not wear shorts or pants the save u. S. The saudis. There was no call in the county
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