Saudi Arabia's Oil; Saudi Arabia and 9/11; Sportswashing | 60 Minutes Full Episodes

the good news is that the price of oil is falling a lot it's also the bad news if you're determined that the U.S kick its addiction to foreign oil president-elect Barack Obama says now is the time to do that even with the economy in recession but the oil Kingdom Saudi Arabia the world's largest supplier of oil with the U.S as its number one customer is pulling all the levers and spending billions to keep the oil age going we went to Saudi Arabia a few weeks ago to meet one of the most powerful men in the world Ali al-naimi the Saudi oil Minister and de facto head of OPEC the oil cartel if most Americans had an opportunity to sit down with the oil minister of Saudi Arabia the thing they would like to know is where you think the price of oil is going to be say in about six months is it going to be up or down you want my classic answer no I want your honest okay appraisal judgment my honest judgment is if I were to know what the price of oil six months from now I would be in Las Vegas [Laughter] he may be smiling but this is a man with serious heartburn and vertigo the price of oil has been soaring and sinking up and down uncontrollably why did the price in your opinion spike in July why did it go way up to a 147 dollars a barrel basically there was a what's called a fear premium and the fear was that Saudi Arabia itself had peaked out that you'd reached your ceiling of how much available oil is left in in your overall Reserve so what's the truth the truth is here is the kingdom with more than 260 billion battles and I firmly believe that the potential to add another 200 billion barrels of oil are there to be found if the oil minister of Saudi Arabia had one message it was there is no need for those fears and to make the point they let us see facilities that'll increase Saudi capacity from about 10 million barrels a day to more than 12 million and they're going to the ends of the Earth to do it this is Sheba a desert Wilderness where temperatures can reach 135 degrees the Saudis say that 18 billion barrels of oil lie beneath these red sand dunes more than four times The Proven reserves of Alaska to tap into it the Kingdom's National Oil Company Saudi aramco had to build an oasis here the Sheba story is an amazing story al-shamari oversees the mega project at Sheba here in the Kingdom's empty quarter we're on soft sand we're not talking about a hard surface here look this is what it's like here I mean this is soft yeah the logistics are impossible the first thing we had to do is build our own Road in order to access this to get here just to get here once that was done we had to remove 100 million cubic feet of sand just to make the runway that we are currently using 100 million yeah we had to remove a sand dune in order to connect two flat areas to do that what about pipelines we built a pipeline 400 miles in length and you can imagine the challenge of building that pipeline in a topography like this but it was nothing compared to accessing the oil itself which was discovered in 1968 but for 30 years was considered too hard to extract now with sand dunes this high it's almost impossible and the economics just didn't make it at the time until the development of the horizontal drilling that's where you place a Derrick on firm ground then dig down with a drill bit that snakes horizontally under the sand dunes with branching tentacles like a fish bone the drill bits can travel out for as much as five miles you know when when we were growing up we always heard about the building of the pyramids this sounds like the building of the pyramids it was a huge task for everybody the Sheba facility is now being expanded to extract a total of 750 000 barrels a day of high-grade Arab extra light crude and when will you see the first drop of oil out of the new part right behind you we will operate this facility very early next year so the beginning of all nine absolutely then on the other side of the Kingdom there's an even bigger Mega project at a field known as caraeus it's also scheduled to go online next year this is the biggest oil project in history Khalid Abdul kedar the project manager says 1.2 million barrels a day will be tapped here that's more than the entire daily production of some OPEC countries like Qatar and Indonesia wow this is a lot of walking the oil will be stored in massive tanks like this one which is seven stories high look at this yes that is gigantic it's 300 feet across the length of a football field so can we go down can we yes okay be careful be very careful like just about everything at caraeus even the tanks have the latest bells and whistles this is a floating roof yeah so when oil comes in the whole roof which is rise up flies up yes and the stair also will rise up with it so in other words we're standing on the roof of the tank and the oil will push it up we'll push it up all the way up there's more oil in this one field at caraeus than in the entire United States it's the largest oil facility to come online anywhere in the world in nearly three decades with the Saudi say 27 billion barrels of oil has anybody projected how many years it's going to take to deplete it will take us more than 50 years 50 yes correas like the sand dunes presented a technological challenge the field has very little natural pressure which is necessary to bring the oil to the surface so to force the oil up they're injecting sea water down deep underground we will inject about 84 million of gallon per day of seawater so where's the sea water coming from because we're here in the middle of the desert how far away is the sea it is about 150 miles from here so in in addition to all of this for the oil you're also building a pipeline from the pipeline to get the additional water all the way to here the complexity and vastness of the project are staggering with 26 contractors 106 subcontractors and 22 000 workers from around the world who have laid thousands of miles of Pipeline and cables how much steel are you using here because I I'm looking it's just steel as far as I can see see we have enough structure still here that will build two Bridges equivalent size of the Golden Gate bridges in California two two these two Mega projects plus three others are costing Saudi Arabia a total of 60 billion dollars over five years and they're not borrowing any of it it's all being paid for in cash still Saudi costs for producing oil are the lowest in the world how much does it cost Saudi Arabia to produce one barrel of oil this is an excellent question it is very small very little it's probably less than two dollars to to produce a barrel Saudi Arabia reportedly needs to sell oil for at least fifty five dollars a barrel to cover the cost of running the country fossil fuels Finance 75 percent of its entire domestic spending budget but oil has sunk below that break-even price does this worry you does this send chills through your through your spine I'm not aware I get concerned but I don't worry are you concerned the concern is this any price must be good for the producer for the consumer for the investor the oil companies so you're saying if the price goes too low then then production will fall and in the end will be squeezed we won't have enough oil to run our country we'll Skyrocket what he wants is an end to the wild swings in price which is why to keep the price from further plummeting he agreed to a cut of 1.5 million barrels a day in the October meeting of OPEC the oil cartel the point is that that Saudi Arabia wanted the 1.5 this was not something jammed down your throat no this is no no it's not by the way nothing gets jammed oh the on our throats but Iran wanted more well I mean different countries want different levels different cuts but in the final analysis reason prevails but are you saying that Saudi Arabia influence on OPEC influence so strong now that he was able to quash Iran's attempt to double the price of oil which Tehran needs to support its budget including its nuclear program and the bank rolling of militias like Hezbollah and Hamas still all naimi says oil is no longer used as a weapon Iran tries to keep the price way up and Venezuela is trying to keep the price way up that you don't consider that oil as a weapon if you looked at these sentences you just named yes every one of them would like to sell every battle they can as it's higher prices as they can get away with right the sense out of the OPEC meeting to a lot of people was by cutting production your purpose was to get the price up again and that would hurt the world which is suffering an economic crisis and the world means everywhere I can assure you that price was the least on our mind but of course I say that in all honesty but the sense is you were oblivious to the concerns of of the world facing this economic crisis you didn't care about uh the recession the credit problems or anything like that that is really a very unfair criticism what did governments do when the financial crisis happened they took measures to bring stability back to the financial market and we see because of our responsibility a future crisis in the oil Market should we not take preemptive measures to prevent it and I think the answer is yes we should it's incumbent on us not to see the oil Market destroyed the Saudis recently announced the price they would like to see oil selling for 75 dollars a barrel about 50 percent higher than the current price are they trying to keep the U.S addicted to oil their answer when we come back Saudi aramco was originally an American company it goes way back to the 1930s when two American geologists from Standard Oil of California discovered oil in the Saudi desert standard oil formed a Consortium with Texaco Exxon and mobile which became a ramco it wasn't until the 1980s that Saudi Arabia bought them out and nationalized the company today Saudi aramco is the custodian of the country's sole source of wealth and power Saudi aramco is a massive complex along the Persian Gulf hundreds of miles east of the mega projects over sixteen thousand people work here at the company's compound which is like a little country with its own security Force schools hospitals even its own Airline is president and CEO of Saudi aramco so this is your headquarters this is our headquarters and uh how big is a ramco Saudi aramco is the world's largest oil producing company and it's the richest company in the world worth according to the latest estimate 781 billion dollars this is the heart of our operation this is the nerve center it keeps going look at this this is gigantic he gave us a tour of the company's Command Center where Engineers scrutinize and analyze every aspect of the company's operations on a 220 foot digital screen every facility in the Kingdom every drop of oil that comes from the ground is monitored in real time in this room in this room and we have control of each and every facility each and every pipeline each and every valve on the pipeline and therefore we know exactly what is happening in the system from A to Z what this map shows is all the oil fields in Saudi Arabia that big green blob in the middle is gawar the largest onshore oil field in the world and the one on top is safania the largest offshore oil field in the world and these green squares are super tankers that are being monitored on the high seas in real time so there's not anything that goes on with oil with Saudi Arabian oil that isn't known in this room absolutely absolutely how much did this facility cost you a lot of money and what you see today is a company that is as professionally sound as any International oil company before Ali al-naimi became oil Minister he ran Saudi aramco for 11 years he was the first Saudi president and CEO you have as you just said one of the most efficient Cutting Edge 21st century companies in the world yes within one of the most religious conservative countries in the world it's it's almost a paradox we were surprised by this I don't think there is any any really surprise many people have images of Saudi Arabia but they really change their views and images when they come and visit Saudi Arabia but to Western eyes it is a paradox skyscrapers traffic jams and shopping malls coexist with ancient tribal customs the king and the Koran reign supreme and women everywhere are required to cover themselves in Black from head to toe even I had to wear the Abaya the rules apply everywhere it seems except for the women at Saudi aramco when the U.S oil companies came here in the 40s and 50s the Americans moved into the area with their families and developed it to suit their tastes and their way of life they created a replica of American Suburbia today you could be in the outskirts of Houston or Los Angeles it's almost like an enclave within Saudi Arabia it's it's it's different from the rest of the country yes that's true because it's it kept a lot of the American ways yes of course there's nothing wrong with these are there are excellent ways but I was so surprised to see the culture there because for instance I saw men and women working side by side I saw women driving cars there which you don't see it's not strange not strange to him he's a product of that culture having risen through the ranks he started out as a 12 year old office boy in 1947 when it was said that to get oil all you needed to do was ladle it out of the sand it was never that easy according to aramco CEO Juma it takes a lot of effort the oil is a gift from God the recovery of oil is really the work of men and this is part of it here here in this room aramco Engineers are making sure that not one drop of oil is overlooked these computers are receiving data via satellite from sensors mounted on drill bits that are burrowing deep into the oil fields all over Saudi Arabia the engineers are sending IMS instant messages that actually guide the drill bits he is now directing that drill bit to go into the best areas of the reservoirs and suck that oil from it and not leave any oil behind so in other words this drill bits like a snake it doesn't go like that no it would go down and then follow with the oil absolutely and mind you this is happening 400 to 500 miles from here geographically and we are sending that drill bit also two or three miles in the ground aljuma says with this technology they're able to recover 10 times more oil than before but Global demand is dwindling even Americans the world's leading gas guzzlers are buying less than the last 10 months Americans drove 78 billion fewer miles than they did in the 10 months last year same 10 months this is quite a dramatic decrease in driving to put it in in better numbers I think your consumption dropped by a million battles is there a thinking that this decrease in demand might be permanent no no he says the u.s's Saudi Arabia's number one customer and the question is what will a ramco do to keep it that way one thing is discourage the move toward electric cars by trying to alleviate our concerns about the environment they showed us their new four million dollar experimental combustion engine which they hope will increase gas mileage while it lowers CO2 emissions what we want to see is that there is an emphasis on also making this oil greener and making the fossil fuels in general A Greener because they're going to be with us for the Long Haul let me be what yeah okay and ask you to be candid is it a ramco's hope to prevent a switch away from oil somebody said the country is the oil business I mean you absolutely need to do this for your own Survival and what's wrong with that well I didn't say anything was wrong with it but it's a fact you'd admit it's a fact yeah we had met a fact that yes this is uh we depend on the oil industry we wanted to help us you know to develop our economy and to develop the economy of the world so what is good for the well-being of Saudi Arabia should be good for the well-being of the world too so there's nothing wrong with that and so what do you say to people out there like Al Gore and and now Mr Obama that say we have to devote ourselves devote ourselves to to reducing our dependence on oil my answer to this is we have to be realistic we don't have the Alternatives today let's be my guest and come and bring them in but they are not there you're saying whatever the world does in terms of wind nuclear coal we're still going to need oil you're still in a lot of it to need oil and and a lot of it politicians use this all the time that we're addicted addicted to foreign oil and addiction has a dark connotation because if you're addicted there's a suggestion that there's a drug dealer who's trying to keep you hooked it's in the air that you want to keep us hooked there is nothing addictive about oil if you look back a hundred years what would the world be without it even President Bush was an oil man even he has said we're addicted to this and we have to get off this oil but listen to what the professionals say and what do they advise it's not going to happen today it's not going to happen 10 years from now it's probably not going to happen 20 years from now it's not going to happen 30 years from now okay because you are still going to be using fossil fuels rather than oil pushers the Saudis see themselves as good Global Citizens who are trying to save the world from a catastrophic oil shortage but as oil Minister al-naimi told us the kingdom is hedging its bets we in Saudi Arabia are developing solar energy solar energy yes you're doing research in solar energy yes what else is the solar energy the most intense the desert who knows that's of course but won't that hurt your oil industry no no no not at all it will supplement it our vision is that we will be exporters of gigawatts of electricity we will be exporting both okay and what was it battles of oil and gigawatts of power and so he says the kingdom will still be in the energy business long after the sun sets on the age of oil in 10 days President Obama will visit Saudi Arabia at a time of deep mistrust between the two allies and lingering doubts about the Saudi commitment to fighting violent Islamic extremism it also comes at a time when the White House and intelligence officials are reviewing whether to declassify one of the country's most sensitive documents known as the 28 Pages they have to do with 9 11 and the possible existence of a Saudi support network for the hijackers while they were in the U.S for 13 years the 28 Pages have been locked away in a secret vault only a small group of people have ever seen them tonight you'll hear from some of the people who have read them and believe along with the families of 9 11 victims that they should be Declassified I think it is implausible to believe that 19 people most of whom didn't speak English most of whom had never been in the United States before many of whom didn't have a high school education could have carried out such a complicated task without some support from within the United States and you believe that the 28 pages are crucial to this I think they are a key part former U.S senator Bob Graham has been trying to get the 28 Pages released since the day they were classified back in 2003 when he played a major role in the first government investigation into 9 11. I remain deeply disturbed by the amount of material that has been censored from this report at the time Graham was chairman of the Senate select committee on intelligence I called The Joint inquiry committee to order and co-chair of the bipartisan joint Congressional inquiry into intelligence failures surrounding the attacks The Joint inquiry reviewed a half a million documents interviewed hundreds of witnesses and produced an 838-page report minus the Final Chapter which was blanked out excised by the Bush Administration for reasons of national security so this is your office Bob Graham won't discuss the classified information in the 28 Pages he will say only that they outline a network of people that he believes supported the hijackers while they were in the U.S you believe that support came from Saudi Arabia substantially and when we say the Saudis you mean the government rich people in the country Charities all of the above Graham and others believe the Saudi role has been soft pedaled to protect a delicate relationship with a complicated Kingdom where the rulers royalty riches in religion are all deeply intertwined in its institutions committee will be in order Porter Goss who was Graham's Republican co-chairman on the house side of the joint inquiry it later director of the CIA also felt strongly that an uncensored version of the 28 pages should be included in the final report the two men made their case to the FBI and its then director Robert Mueller in a face-to-face meeting they pushed back very hard on the 28 pages and they said no that cannot be unclassified at this time did you happen to ask the FBI director why it was classified dead in a general way and the answer was because we said so when it needs to be classified Goss says he knew of no reason then and knows of no reason now why the pages need to be classified they are locked away under the Capitol in guarded vaults called sensitive compartmented information facilities or Skiffs in government jargon this is as close as we could get with our cameras a highly restricted area where members of congress with the proper clearances can read the documents under close supervision no note-taking allowed it's all got to go up here Steve Tim Romer a former Democratic congressman and U.S ambassador to India has read the 28 Pages multiple times first is a member of The Joint inquiry and later is a member of the Blue Ribbon 911 Commission which picked up where congress's investigation left off how hard is it to actually read these 28 Pages very hard these are tough documents to get your eyes on Romer and others who have actually read the 28 Pages describe them as a working draft similar to a grand jury or police report that includes provocative evidence some verified and some not they lay out the possibility of official Saudi assistance for two of the hijackers who settled in Southern California that information from the 28 Pages was turned over to the 911 Commission for further investigation some of the questions raised were answered in the commission's final report others were not is there information in the 28 pages that if they were Declassified would surprise people sure you're going to be surprised by it and uh you're going to be surprised by some of the answers that are sitting there today in the 911 Commission report about what happened in San Diego and what happened in Los Angeles and what was the Saudi involvement much of that surprising information is buried in footnotes and dependencies of the 911 report part of the official public record but most of it unknown to the General Public these are some but not all of the facts in January of 2000 the first of the hijackers landed in Los Angeles after attending an Al-Qaeda Summit in Kuala Lumpur Malaysia the two Saudi Nationals nawaf al-hazmi and Khalid all midar arrived with extremely limited language skills and no experience with Western culture yet through an incredible series of circumstances they managed to get everything they needed from housing to flight lessons La San Diego that's really you know the Hornet's Nest that's really the one that I continue to think about almost on a daily basis during their first days in La Witnesses placed the two future hijackers at the king fod mosque in the company of Fahad all through Mary a diplomat at the Saudi consulate known to hold extremist views later 9 11 investigators would find him deceptive and suspicious and in 2003 he would be denied re-entry to the United States for having suspected ties to terrorist activity this is a very interesting person in the whole 911 episode of who might have helped whom in Los Angeles and San Diego with two terrorists who didn't know their way around phone records show that tumeri was also in regular contact with this man Omar all bayumi a mysterious Saudi who became the hijacker's biggest benefactor he was a ghost employee with the no-show job at a Saudi Aviation contractor outside Los Angeles while drawing a paycheck from the Saudi government you believe biome was a Saudi agent yes what makes you believe that well for one thing he'd been listed even before 9 11 in FBI files as being a Saudi agent on the morning of February 1st 2000 bayumi went to the office of the Saudi consulate where thumeri worked he then proceeded to have lunch at a middle eastern restaurant on Venice Boulevard where he later claimed he just happened to make the acquaintance of the two future hijackers hosmia medhar magically run into Miami in a restaurant that Naomi claims is a coincidence and one of the biggest cities in the United States and he decides to befriend them he decides to not only befriend them but then to help them move to San Diego and get residents in San Diego bayumi found them a place to live in his own apartment complex Advanced them the security deposit and co-signed the lease he even threw them a party and introduced them to other Muslims who would help the hijackers obtain government IDs and enroll in English classes and flight schools there's no evidence that bayumi orthumeri knew what the future hijackers were up to and it is possible that they were just trying to help fellow Muslims but the very dayumi welcomed the hijackers to San Diego there were four calls between his cell phone and the Imam at a San Diego mosque Anwar al-alaki a name that should sound familiar America cannot and will not win the american-born al-laki would be Infamous a decade later as Al qaeda's Chief propagandist and top operative in Yemen until he was taken out by a CIA drone but in January 2001 a year after becoming the hijackers spiritual advisor he left San Diego for Falls Church Virginia months later hosmi midar and three more hijackers would join him there those are a lot of acquincidences and that's a lot of smoke is that enough to make you squirm and uncomfortable and dig harder and declassify these 28 Pages absolutely perhaps no one is more interested in reading the 28 Pages than attorneys Jim kreiner and Sean Carter who represent family members of the 9 11 victims in their lawsuit against the kingdom alleging that its institutions provided money to Al Qaeda knowing that it was Waging War against the United States what we're doing in court is is developing the story that has to come out but it's been difficult for us because for many years we weren't getting the kind of openness and cooperation that that we think our government owes to the American people particularly the the families the people who are murdered the U.S government is even backed the Saudi position in court that it can't be sued because it enjoys sovereign immunity the 911 Commission report says that Saudi Arabia has long been considered the primary source of Al Qaeda funding through its wealthy citizens and Charities with significant government sponsorship but the sentence that got the most attention when the report came out is this we have found no evidence that the Saudi government as an institution or senior Saudi officials individually funded the organization attorney Sean Carter says it's the most carefully crafted line in the 911 Commission report and the most misunderstood when they say that we found no evidence that senior Saudi officials individually funded Al Qaeda they conspicuously leave open the potential that they found evidence that people who were officials that they did not regard as senior officials had done so that is the essence of the family's lawsuit that elements of the government and lower level officials sympathetic to Bin Laden's cause helped Al Qaeda carry out the attacks and help sustain the al-Qaeda Network yet for more than a decade the kingdom is maintained at that one sentence exonerated it of any responsibility for 9 11. regardless of what might be in the 28 Pages it's not an exoneration but we said we did not with this report exonerate the Saudis former U.S senator Bob Carey is another of the 10-member 911 Commission who has read the 28 pages and believes they should be Declassified he filed an affidavit in support of the 911 families lawsuit you can't provide the money for terrorists and then say I don't have anything to do with what they were doing do you believe that all of the leads that were developed in the 28 Pages were answered in the 911 report all the questions no in general the 911 Commission did not get every single detail of the conspiracy we didn't we didn't have the time we didn't have the resources and we certainly didn't pursue the entire line of inquiry in regards Saudi Arabia do you think all of these things in San Diego can be explained as coincidence I don't believe in coincidences John Layman who was Secretary of the Navy in the Reagan Administration says that he and the others make up a solid majority of former 911 Commissioners who think the 28 pages should be made public we're not a bunch of roofs that rode into Washington for this commission I mean you know we've seen fire and we've seen rain in in the politics of National Security we all have dealt for our careers in highly classified and compartmentalized in every aspect of security we know when something shouldn't be Declassified and the this those 28 pages in no way fall into that category Layman has no doubt that some high Saudi officials knew that assistance was being provided to Al Qaeda but he doesn't think it was ever official policy he also doesn't think that it absolves the Saudis of responsibility it was no accident that 15 of the 19 hijackers were Saudis they all went to Saudi schools they learned from the time they were first able to go to school of this intolerant brand of Islam Lehman is talking about wahhabism the ultra-conservative puritanical form of Islam that's rooted here and permeates every facet of society there is no separation of church and state after oil wahhabism is one of the Kingdom's biggest exports Saudi clerics entrusted with Islam's holiest shrines have immense power and billions of dollars to spread the faith building mosques in religious schools all over the world that have become recruiting grounds for violent extremists 9 11 commissioner John Layman says all of this comes across in the 28 Pages this is not going to be a Smoking Gun that is going to to cause a huge fuhrer but it does give a very compact illustration of the kinds of things that went on that would really help the American people to understand how is it that these people are springing up all over the world to go to Jihad look the Saudis have even said therefore declassifying it we should declassify it is it sensitive Steve might it involve opening a bit of can of worms or some snakes crawling out of there yes but I think we need a relationship with the Saudis where both countries are working together to fight against terrorism and that's not always been the case in the days of the Roman Coliseum they called it bread and circuses leaders using The Superficial appeal of entertainment to distract citizens from genuine problems the term today sportswashing the use of games and teams and stadiums to cleanse an image and launder a reputation a country that has never won an Olympic gold medal Saudi Arabia has suddenly emerged as a major player in global sport hosting events spying teams and luring athletes with staggering contracts is this investment an attempt to diversify the economy and cater to younger citizens as its leaders claim or is it done to paper over human rights abuses authoritarian Rule and even murder we visited the kingdom to check out the sports World's new nerve center then check out what the Saudis and their neighbors are getting for their money Argentina champions of the world's greatest game Argentina may have claimed the World Cup last December but it wasn't the only country to emerge as a big winner a controversial choice to host the oil Rich Gulf State of Qatar through more than 200 billion dollars into staging the event and dribbled past criticism over its appalling human rights record and another winner was next door Saudi Arabia fielded the one team that beat Argentina a Triumph celebrated around the Arab world not least by Prince abdulaziz bin turkey alsau the country's minister of sport it was unbelievable it was just a milestone that we ticked that shows that if you put the effort and and the right resources behind it you can achieve impossible things probable continued after the World Cup Saudi Arabia's enormous resources that is sloshing oil money enticed Cristiano Ronaldo of Portugal a generational star to play for a team in Riyadh his salary more than 200 million dollars a season that's right 200 million roughly the annual playing wages of LeBron James Steph Curry Aaron judge and Patrick Mahomes combined the opening bell for Saudi Arabia's investment in global Sports sounded three years ago with the Clash on the dunes a heavyweight title fight a few months later the kingdom staged the world's richest horse race [Music] [Applause] there's Formula One racing and a 10-year deal with the WWE [Applause] but to many these Mega events in Saudi Arabia are Financial loss leaders being used to launder the image of a country while cloaking repression and authoritarian rule you've heard this term Sports washing this idea that countries can cover up bad Acts through sports do you believe in the concept that a country can use Sports this way not at all I don't agree with that with that term because I think that if you go to different parts of the world then you bring people together everyone should come see Saudi Arabia see it for what it is and then make your decision see it for yourself if you don't like it fine which is precisely why we came to Saudi Arabia late last year to see this unlikely Sports Hub for ourselves December is the off season for pro tennis yet Riyadh was the site of an exhibition studded with top 10 stars and embroidered with local touches Falcons enlisted to help with the draw ceremony but the real draw Australia's Nick curios was blunt what's brought you here at the end well money's pretty good I'm not gonna lie despite deserts of empty seats and little in the way of Television rights usually the lifeblood for sports the players were paid Millions just to show up magnificent in tiller Fritz a Californian earned a million dollars in prize money for winning the weekend event the Saudis aren't just hosting events through the Kingdom's Sovereign wealth fund they bought an English Premier League soccer team Newcastle United we saw them for a visiting game against the local team pointedly abandoning their usual striped kits were the green of the Saudi flag then there is to date saudi's biggest swing in sports the 2.5 billion dollar live tour which has divided golf dismissing this rival to the PGA Tour as quote an endless pit of money Tiger Woods turned down 800 million dollars from the Saudis to join live many other top players including Phil Mickelson and Dustin Johnson did switch their tour allegiances both paid as they were north of a hundred million dollars this flood of Saudi money into sports is just absolutely it's a disrupter it's completely changing the face of sports is is that the intention not at all it adds a lot to the sport you have to realize the impact this has and when winners of live golf events are making multiple times what Tiger Woods won the last time he won the Masters that's a big economic change it doesn't matter I think if the impact of increasing the participation of sports and the interest in that sport is growing then why not the sports Minister insists that the massive investment is an essential pillar of what is called Vision 2030 a 7 trillion dollar plan by the Kingdom's effective ruler Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman or MBS to diversify the economy Beyond oil while softening some of its most restrictive social conventions and laws it's now permitted for women to drive uncover their head hold a passport and travel without a male Guardian on the country's fields and in gyms and rec centers young Saudis male and female are embracing sport so are their moms Rasha El hummus is the country's first female certified boxing coach back in 2019 she attended the Clash on the dunes fight this is your country these are two International Superstars and you're not watching them on TV you're watching them live here what was I like I would never imagine that me going to the fight driving my car and attending the fight and and my own country so that's a that's a massive transformation and you can feel that the changes tangible yet these changes come at a cost Lu Jane l hath lul the Saudi women to drive movement and was punished for her activism arrested charged with terrorism and sentenced to prison where she says she was tortured even after her release she is prevented from leaving the country her sister Lena lives in Exile and spoke with us remotely when we talk about sports of course we we do want to have entertainment in Saudi Arabia we do want to have this but it's not at the expense of of our freedoms we don't want to be living in fear and not knowing if tomorrow they will break into our house and take our sister or our daughter I do not want to live in this country I want to live in a country where I feel free truly even if they haven't fancy sporting events I want both her sister's harsh treatment she says underscores a stark Paradox at a time when social freedoms have expanded political repression in Saudi Arabia has become more severe you're saying this is window dressing this is this is cosmetic and behind the games there's Mass executions and repression like never before absolutely exactly this is what's happening the cultural shift goes beyond Sports who would have pegged Saudi Arabia to start hosting an annual desert raid Bruno Mars and DJ Khaled were among the headliners it's all of a piece Sports entertainment tourism to marry it all the Crown Prince turned to American impresario jarion zarillo what's the guy from Brooklyn doing in a place like this creating magic making a place welcoming for everybody to come see the kingdom the birthplace of the Kingdom very exciting times in his career in hospitality and entertainment in zarillo launched Atlantis in the Bahamas name a global celebrity and be assured Jerry has made their acquaintance I've done five decades in tourism my job is to welcome people and to create joy and festivity with vision 2030 now we want people to come to Saudi today he oversees a massive 63 billion dollar development on the site where the Saudi state was born converting it into a modern Xanadu with homes for a hundred thousand people luxury hotels and restaurants we asked in zarillo about his comfort level representing this autocracy he told us he focuses on the positive you know I I went to school in Las Vegas and as a gambling term that when you're way ahead you're playing Woodhouse money you're winning well I'm not only am I winning I've won you know there's an old country western song dance with the one in brung you who bring you who brung me here yeah Vision 2030 a very benevolent very love king and a very Visionary Dynamic Crown Prince but it's the less noble doings of the Crown Prince that have stained the country's reputation but with accelerating and complicating its foray into sports a CIA report said MBS approved the 2018 assassination and dismembering of Washington Post journalist Jamel khashoggi under mbs's rule executions have drastically increased including a mass beheading of 81 people in one day last March the mildest criticism of the state even on Twitter has been met with detention torture and long and arbitrary prism sentences we've heard a lot about transition we've seen it with our own eyes but the concern is that this country right now is still not fit to hold International sporting events we're not saying that we're perfect but what I'm trying to say is that these things help us to achieve a better future for our population I think no country would say they're perfect but are you saying that every country has a leader that according to the CIA has ordered the murder of a journalist are you saying that every country has 81 beheadings at a single day and if the answer is no doesn't it make this relative argument this what about Islam doesn't it make that irrelevant well what I'm trying to say is that let's look at the good side about this and and you know you're just pinpointing certain topics that if we I go and you know we had the mass shooting a couple of weeks ago in the US does that mean that we don't host the the World Cup in the US no we should go to the us we should get people together mass shooting is not a government actor let's be clear about it still whatever whatever people died but what I'm trying to say is that if we look at only the bad side then we shouldn't do anything are there not Universal so they're not basic thresholds you think need to be met as I said there's a lot of issues with a lot of countries but then you mentioned that the order came from the conference and that's not true there's no proof of that as we speak you're denying that the cia's report that says I don't think there's a report actually says that if you look at it the CIA report concluded Saudi Arabia's Crown Prince Muhammad bin Salman approved an operation to capture or kill Saudi journalist Jamal khashoggi finally they Collide still the games go on so do the choices just last month FIFA soccer's governing body not known for occupying ethical High Ground responded to protests from players and turned down Saudi tourism sponsorship offer for this Summer's Women's World Cup these moral dilemmas will only intensify when we were in Saudi Arabia we saw a top-level tennis event a top-level golf event had just been held Bruno Mars had given a concert what would your message be to the athletes and entertainers who are coming in to perform and compete my message is that why would you go to Saudi Saudi Arabia and going on the ground to speak on behalf of the prisoners who have been muzzled on all the families that cannot speak because when you go to Saudi Arabia you are part of of discovering up machine what do you think the purpose is of throwing around billions and billions of dollars into sports like this I think the the Saudi government decided regime and MBS he wants people to think of Ronaldo when they think about Saudi and not about that's become the association now we've gone from the murder journalist to the star soccer player absolutely unfortunately

Channel: 60 Minutes

Views: 717,185

Keywords: saudi arabia, 60 minutes, cbs news, saudi crown prince, saudi arabia vs argentina, oil, 9/11, 28 pages, sportswashing, liv golf

Id: gHv0Fjq3GTM

Length: 52min 45sec (3165 seconds)

Published: Sat Jun 10 2023