>> from our studios in new york city, this is "charlie rose." >> bob simon was a friend and colleague at cbs news and spent five decades as a correspondent.

he won 27 emmys. bob was killed in a car crash last night, he was 73. an executive producer called him a reporter's reporter, driven by the natural curiosity. there is no one else like bob simon. jeff had it right. earlier today, we reflected on his long and esteemed career as a colleague. >> as a globetrotting foreign correspondent, bob simon was a striking figure. his assignments took him to far corners of the earth but it all began in vietnam. >> we are going to pick up an american. all we know is that he is at firebase andrews. >> a war he covered for much of the 1970's, he was on one of the last american helicopters out of saigon.

>> simon was named chief middle east correspondent for cbs in 1987, reporting on conflict in the region for over 20 years. he witnessed different wars. >> miracles never cease. >> he covered the israeli president's assassination. and he and his crew captured a brutal beating of 2 palestinian teenagers. it was a powerful image of the conflict. >> cold, deliberate, methodical and went on for 40 minutes. >> but he was never one to shy away from war zone, he covered the gulf war. he ended up being part of the story when iraqi forces kept him and his crew. for 40 days, they were imprisoned, beaten, starved, and threatened with death.

he spoke about it with ed bradley. >> has it changed you? >> yeah. >> anyone, who watched simon's work on "60 minutes," knew his range as a reporter. his skill for storytelling and the grace of his words. >> before long, a makeshift conservatory. every room, every corridor, no matter how small or dark or stifling was teeming with sound. >> he helped us understand the language of elephants. >> these fearsome noises are actually elephants greeting one another. glad to see you. >> and took us back to the calamity at fukushima.

>> it seems to have stopped time. the clock shows 2:46, the moment the earthquake hit. it looks like it could've happened yesterday. >> he showed us a global world through the eyes of sudan's lost boys. >> they started running, streams of boys became rivers. hundreds became thousands. >> and made us comprehend the enormity of the massacres. >> this is where the bodies are stored. a small fraction of the missing but more than anyone could imagine. >> simon, the winner of 27 emmys, had a voice unlike anybody else. he came to this table five times. >> i am bob simon of cbs news, sitting in for charlie rose.

>> in 1992, he spoke about the 40 days he spent as a hostage during the persian gulf war. >> you got up that morning and it turned into the most extraordinary time of your life and what was going through your mind? >> what was going through my mind? not a hell of a lot. it took a lot of reflection later to realize just what an ordinary day it was. we were just, we were doing, what we never convinced the iraqis we were doing. they couldn't believe that journalists behaved like that and western journalists would go out on their own. >> one of the reasons you were doing it? >> we would've done it anyway.

something going on and we wanted to check out what was going on up north. we would have done it. it just so happened we were not supposed to do it and we did it anyway. we were not just doing it out of spite. >> also doing that because of the number of war you covered. there was some effort to restrict you from following where you felt the story led to. >> perturbed, yeah, not as much as there was a cat and mouse game going and they were the cat and we were the mice. and, we had done it a few days earlier. as soon as the air war began our suspicions about the pentagon planned to manage the press was confirmed. a few days earlier, my colleagues and i went on the

border between saudi arabia and kuwait. we happened to cross something that happened to not be reported by the pentagon press corps. iraqi artillery had pummeled it and an american marine unit was under fire. and the marines are not supposed to talk to us, they did. and also, some saudi defenders their tents were empty and they were not there. and we brought that material back to the cbs bureau and had what was, in the context of that day, a pretty good story. absolutely what, as you know, it is all about. and so we went back a couple of days later, did one story on friday and another on sunday.

the military traffic we passed as we were going from where the base was up to the border, the military traffic was a story in itself. we had never seen anything like it anywhere ever. as i wrote i believe, it was not a series of convoys but a never ending convoy. we had quite a story ready. we wanted to flesh it out a bit. >> when did you know that this was going to be as harrowing as it turned out to be? there must've been a time in which you thought, i will be able to convince them i am a member of the press and they will let me go and not believe i am a spy. the other end is you expressed it in the book, i can rot away in a prison and never get to see

my family. my body will be dumped somewhere. >> that is what the book is about. it is about the progress from thinking that i was still a reporter, who could sweet talk his way out of a tough situation, or get killed anyway. >> when did it switch? >> in fact, after the initial brusqueness of getting caught, we were for the next several hours treated and taken to a bunker and introduce as some very civil, sophisticated english-speaking iraqi officers. they were awfully nice fellows to chat with.

my british colleagues and i work -- we had been in stuff like this and would take a few cigarettes and laughs and bad jokes and we would be on our way. a couple of hours, they were beating -- excuse my vernacular, they were beating us up badly in another place. that was when they start beating you up badly, you realize it is up. >> what goes through your mind? takes us, the feelings? >> it is something i tried to write about. difficult to explain. i tried. the most remarkable thing about getting beaten up badly, i thought it was just me and i compared notes with other people who had been pow's and the remarkable thing i experienced is that it is not as bad as i

thought it would be. and, i do not recommend it. it is not fun. but, after a while, i realized i could get through it. i just hoped they would leave my eyes alone and -- other parts. and it hurt like hell. but what this book is about is the big surprise, a series of surprises and what the surprises are is how incredibly adaptive we are, adapted and adaptable to deal with situations we never anticipated. in 40 days, i kept on discovering not me, bob simon, but to me human being discovering things i never thought.

like being beaten up and i realized that, in a sort of strange way, my mind would retreat and come back. my mind was sort of synchronized with the blows. my mind was smarter than their sticks were. and it is tough to put into words, but i knew it would not break. >> did you find things about yourself that you liked? that you did not know were there? >> not so much as bob simon but a guy. one thing you discover is the will to survive that had never really been put to the test for

me before. >> and driven by the love of your family? >> i think that might be sentimental but driven by this biological will to survive, more powerful than you can experience --that anyone does experience until they are really against it. you know it is there. it is there and it works. >> worse moments was? >> i do not know, i am asked that sometimes. there were several. a whole bunch of worst moments. the first time they accused me of being a spy. it was something i could get through. what you are up against in an experience like this are not bad moments like getting spat upon or being called bad names. >> this is you in baghdad hotel. >> i cannot find a word for this. because "regret" is not a strong enough word. it might not be a strong enough word.

--for the pain i know, i caused my loved ones, i will try to make up for it in any way i can. and i thank god that the four of us are alive. >> you really said to yourself "how could i have done this to my family?" did you think about that every day? >> oh, sure. sure. the worst moment, not a moment because it was constant and what that was was the idea that they were going to kill me. i got to a point where i could deal with that in terms of them killing me. what i'd never got to the point

of accepting was the notion that they were going to off me. i could just be disappeared and my family never would have known. >> that is what political prisoners say. that is why they talk about human rights activities on their behalf make a difference. i have talked to a number of them. nobody would know if they kill me. no one knows that i am here and no one will know if they take me. >> another example of this club we belong to where we are not aware of. sure, you go through this experience and others will say very similar things because of that was it. i can picture my wife and daughter never knowing what happened. i spent a lot of time over the

years with the families of the missing from vietnam and stories about them. the people who are haunted day in and day out. >> how has it changed you in terms of coverage? it looks like you had on military khakis. [laughter] >> a year later, we cannot laugh about it, no point to survive. i have to make sure not to get captured again. >> how would you do it differently? >> i do not know. i do not think i have changed much. >> what about your wife? [laughter] >> unfortunately, she said he didn't change. >> something about a big story that is exciting and sometimes a big story is a war and sometimes it is not. >> you want to be the middle east? >> sure. >> good to have you. >> bob served as the correspondent and lived in israel for many years and talked about the israeli/palestinian

conflict and talked about in 2009. tell me about what you did and what conclusions you have come to. >> while the gaza theater was lit up, our producer had the bright idea of sending us to the west bank which was not getting attention. it was the main battlefront for the israeli-palestinian conflict. what we were going to see was whether peace was possible, but -- or if history had passed peace by. the solution for the west bank problem has always been or has been for many, many decades, the two state solution. israel on one side and palestine on the other. the question was, is it still possible or inconceivable by

now? >> and you think? >> i think history has passed it by mainly because the israelis have sent so many settlers, so many jewish settlers to the west bank and there is close to 300,000 of them. removing the settlers which has to be done -- it is not politically viable. it is not militarily viable. the settlers are convinced if the army were to be sent in to evacuate settlers, the government would fall in a day -- which i think is probably true. if the army went in, so many of the soldiers now are religious guys that the army would break apart. >> would it have been -- it is not a fair question but nevertheless, supposed it was prime minister sharon, a different answer?

>> i was so sentimentally attached to prime minister rabin that i think anything might have been possible with rabin, which is why he was killed. >> of all of your friends in israel, you live there how many years? >> 10. >> to all of your friends, would you say the building of the settlements was a bad idea and not in your interest? >> they would say, of course and change the subject of conversation. in places like tel aviv where just about everyone is for peace and against settlements, the irony, when you go to a dinner party in tel aviv, everything is discussed except politics. family, friends, movie, music, everything. vacations. you name it, it is discussed but not the politics of the situation. >> because they are tired of it

or because they know there's no light? >> because they are tired and they are in a life of denial. they do not want to be bothered with these questions that do not have an answer. >> he joined me on a conversation on how 9/11 had changed the world. >> i get nervous when i hear the rhetoric of winning the war on terrorism -- about victory. i understand the need for rhetoric but i think it raises false expectations. i do not know of anyone who has won the war against terrorism. the israelis who are so much better equipped at this point to fight it then we are, or perfectly prepared and to have infiltrated every terrorist organization which fights them bombed them, they cannot make it stop.

the british have been trying to get it out of northern ireland since 1969, no way. the french, who systematically used torture to eliminate the liberation movement against french rule in algeria in 1957 they won the battle of algiers by torturing everyone they caught and getting the information they had. they won the particular battle of the algiers raised up again. >> what is the acceptable level of violence? >> indeed. in israel now, it is not acceptable and yet -- >> no one could go into a

restaurant without being fearful that someone will walk in their, that is unacceptable. >> people do go to restaurants. the restaurants in tel aviv are packed. after while, this hasn't happened to us yet, we're in a state of shock. go to any city in war. they get hit. sarajevo, life goes on. there is a remote possibility this was a one off shot and now it will go away. >> very remote. >> but if they continue, i do not think we can even begin to imagine what we as a society and the administration will have to do or have to take on as measures to make it stop. we've never done stuff like that before. we do not have any idea how it will transform. the biggest problem is it pushes us into fascism. >> he is survived by his wife and daughter who is a producer on "60 minutes."

bob simon, dead at 73. ♪ >> adam silver is here, he is the commissioner of the nba. he has had a busy first year after taking over from david stern. in april, he enforced a lifetime ban on donald sterling. his racist remarks caught on a recording. in august, steve ballmer bought the clippers for a record $2 billion. all-star festivities will return to new york this weekend on saturday, barclays center will host events including the dunk contest and three point shootout. on sunday, the game will be played at madison square garden.

i am pleased to have adam silver back. you were here when you were getting ready to take over. it has been one hell of a ride. >> it is been a chock-full year. last time i was here with david stern and we came on together. >> remember this, you love the knicks -- >> growing up. i love all teams equally. >> you are a lawyer and then went to work for david. why did you make the transition from law to a job at the nba? >> i was practicing law in new york, a new york firm and i was doing largely media cases and i became fascinated with the media business. hbo at the time was one of the largest clients. while i was working on media

matters, i thought it would be interesting to go to the other side of the table rather than litigating, i would rather build the business side of media. i looked to make a transition out of law and david stern was somebody who my father had known and worked at the same law firm. precisely. i wrote david a letter, among a lot of people and said, "hello. i want to make the transition from law into business." i did not set out wanting to work in sports necessarily but more about media. david, in the early 1990's, had done a deal with tnt, which was a fledgling network. and a lot of talk about how david was moving the nba to be a modern media business. he was one that people called me. >> under david's leadership what you did in developing that aspect of the nba, nba.com.

>> well, we were the first league to form its own full-time network. we launched nba tv show. we've always had a major cable presence, our teams and their cities with our regional sports networks have a major presence. the media business so i went to the nba as a huge fan, i grew up a knicks fans and going to a lot of games. my greatest interest was going into business. it happened to be i was fortunate enough to end up working with the nba. in my early years, focused entirely on the business side. only later that i morphed and did more on the basketball side. >> i guess there was a time when david made you a number two that you knew you were the logical choice of replacing him? a lot of learning experience. >> right, i ended up working directly for david.

i started as his assistant. i had five jobs at the nba before becoming commissioner. the last was deputy commissioner. even when i became deputy commissioner, it was not so clear i would become commissioner. there was a guy named russ, i worked with him as well. russ left. by then, david gave me the opportunity over the years to demonstrate that i ran something called nba entertainment, which was the media business. i got to know many of our owners and other key constituents around a lot better. started working directly with players association. >> on the upside, what is the challenge for the nba? international is clearly one. >> we compete against a number of entertainment options.

the way i started, the key is to keep the game interesting, competitive, attractive. there are so many ways, just as your show is competing for people's attention. we are competing with roughly 1000 channels on cable and satellite which is now unlimited because of the internet. we know every day we have to earn our fans' respect and loyalty and willingness to spend their money. >> what are you doing to make sure you maintain their loyalty? >> one thing we continue to be focused on is the game. that's one of the pivots i have made. the mantra is "game above all." at the end of the day, unless the game is compelling, the fans will not continue to watch.

we are talking about how we set the schedule, density of the schedule, fans and players talking about back-to-back making sure that the players are appropriately rested and our playoff format works so you end up with the best 16 teams. we want to make sure the way our games are produced is compelling. >> how to produce parity? >> a great question. people ask me all the time, what are you going to do about the knicks? in the case of the nba, exact same number of wins to give out. when somebody says would you

like the knicks to be better? the question is where should those wins come from. each team has an equal ability to compete for championships. based on their management -- not on how wealthy the owner is based on the additional revenue the large markets may generate. historically, without a salary cap system, an owner is willing to lose incredible amounts of money in order to win or because the owner is in a profitable fashion, has a lot more to invest in the team. let's say it is new york, a much larger media markets. the knicks' local television deal generates more. what we did in the last bargaining collection, true parity in a way. it is much the sport as the system. in the nba, a softer cap but in the last agreement, we created a system that will go further toward creating competitive

parity. even -- i know you are a big basketball fan. if we took the 450 players and said let's create parity -- it would be hard because basketball is an interesting sport of individual and team effort. individuals can be so dominant like lebron james. his team as likely to make the playoffs regardless of where he plays and kobe, michael, tim duncan. >> in all those cases, they generally needed one other player. >> that is where management comes in. if you have three superstars like the miami heat did, you need an important cast of

characters. that's what made what buford did in san antonio so important -- you see true team basketball. even if we dispersed all of the players, it would be hard to create that any given sunday notion in the nba. you want every team to have an equal chance of getting the players. without a salary cap, if new york by virtue, they could outbid the other teams for stars. >> they would love it. >> not a perfect correlation but in baseball, no doubt that there's a correlation between payroll and success on the field. >> basketball is interesting because you have oklahoma. >> another great example, a very small market, they have kevin durant, they got him through the draft and russell westbrook. and they ended up unfortunately having to trade james harden. because it is a small market ownership there did not feel they could go into the luxury tax because it would put them in an unprofitable position.

even in our cap system because of the soft cap, ownership in oklahoma city would say they are at a bit of a disadvantage. from the league office, when they moved james harden, fantastic player and maybe the m.v.p. this year. he is on the houston rockets. dwight howard who is injured. a superstar player. that creates more parity. oklahoma city's loss but houston's gain. >> and the idea of having the team with the worst record have a better draft choice, not necessarily the best.

>> if you see a team losing a lot, can you assume they are happy to be losing? i understand. you are not using the dreaded t-word. we call it rebuilding. [laughter] the lottery was instituted to disincentivize teams. >> is steve ballmer the perfect owner for you? he loves the game. he is invested in the game. he loves his team. it seems like the kind of guy. he does not need it as an ego. he needs it because he loves it. >> i will say yes, he is the perfect owner. somebody we have been talking to for a long time.

before the sonics moved from seattle, he explored buying a team. at that point in his life as a ceo of microsoft, knowing he cannot invest the appropriate amount of time. when sacramento almost moved to seattle -- he was part of that group seeking to acquire the team. my meeting with him when he stepped down from microsoft, neither one of us thought of the clippers would be offered for sale a few months later. we met. what teams are potentially for sale and steve sat there with a map of seattle and took an old-school compass and said i am willing to go about three hours on my plane and not any further. he explored other teams and called other owners. and when it became clear that the sterlings would sell the clippers, we spoke. he engaged with shelly sterling and bought the team. he is a perfect owner. >> does what he paid for the clippers set a new standard as

to what the value of franchises are? >> you began the show by talking about the recent forbes where the value went up by 70%. i think it did. i think the combination. ultimately, the market, buyers and sellers. i think he understood the value of media. somebody like how i got into the sports business, the media technology sector and steve ballmer with the great wealth at microsoft and when he came in, we had a lot of discussions. he had been helpful to me as a sounding board and we had renewed our u.s. television deals and he understands the media business. he understood the live sports content and a world of fragmented media opportunities. something that almost always consumes lives. he realized the values would

only increase. ultimately, he bid against others, he understood the intrinsic value. and he had incentive-- one of those things where he recognized, especially when it comes to an l.a. franchise, once in a generation opportunity like -- to buy a franchise in l.a. or new york. >> a great team. >> a great team with the doc rivers and chris paul. the opportunity came where he was at the moment in his life where he had the resources. the point of him being an owner. he has invested in those. he still has principal residency in seattle and he is basically at every home game and involved in the management of the team. he is a great resource to me as part of our board. >> the donald sterling case. >> effective immediately, i am banning mr. sterling for life from any association with the clippers organization or the

nba. >> how did you see what you had to do? what were the principles guiding you in making hard decisions? >> one, i begin with the fact i had been with the league so long that those principles were intrinsic to me and the league office that in terms of fairness, in terms of a level playing field for all players, all people, nondiscriminatory environment. those were the core principles that had been passed down to me not only by david, but bill russell is still part, oscar robertson is still part, kareem abdul-jabbar. our babe ruths are still around. >> magic, michael, you can go on and on. >> those were the fundamentals at work and from a process

standpoint, it all happened over such a fast few days for me that the audiotape of donald sterling's conversation came out very late on a friday night. >> how did you get to hear it? >> like everyone, i woke up on a saturday morning and had a bunch of e-mails saying, have you heard this? i listened to them with, somewhat in shock, i've known donald sterling for over two decades. it sounds like him, not positive it is him. have not talked to him or his representatives yet. and then, where social media has truly changed the world, internet has disrupted every industry, roughly 10 million people heard the recording in the first 24 hours. tmz quickly got an e-mail to everyone around the internet. we did our investigation and the

next two days and determined it was him. he acknowledged it was him. at first there was a question if he had been doctored or altered. i knew what was necessary in terms of protecting the link and the values we stood for. >> the decision? >> to ban mr. sterling from the league for life. under the circumstances, that was necessary. i will say it's not a decision i took lightly even though it happened quickly. again, for me, especially because i have known him for a long time and i am always mindful, i am a lawyer by training. the fact it began as a private conversation, would i want to be held to that standard the fact that people often make mistakes in life? i thought this was not a mistake.

it was -- my decision based -- i didn't base my decision on past conduct of his. >> and this was enough? >> this was enough. the interview we did with him -- his reaction to it. >> how did you define, if i do not do this, i will lose credibility? i have to be the voice of the league at this moment. i am now in charge of the credibility of the league. >> it was less about me. less of how i look as commissioner. i felt it was my obligation to protect an institution that had existed long before me and hopefully, long after me. michael jordan, i talked to a lot of owners and michael is the owner of the charlotte hornets. michael jordan, of all people, i

didn't ask any of the owners necessarily what i should do. i do not think i presented the range of options -- i just wanted to get from them their reactions. michael jordan said to me, he said, "the league is bigger to -- than any one individual." very much the case. i was not thinking i am not going to look strong. i was thinking i've got to protect the institution. the real issue of the players potentially boycotting our games. not threats just coming from the players but also pressures placed from outside groups including the clippers before i made my decision. i happened to be on a trip to san francisco the day after this happened. i was at their game. this tape came out on a saturday.

before we knew the facts, i spoke to doc rivers, i spoke to chris paul and they were pressured to boycott their own games. they said, how unfair it is to us. they needed the ability to say appropriately so, we need to focus on the game. and so, if i had not taken strong action, it could've been potential boycotts. and then the partners of the league. whether the disney company which owns it -- abc, or tnt or various sponsors, they were being threatened as well. they were calling me and not just because of pressure but they were putting pressure on me and asking, what kind of league is this? all of this had a huge impact. >> you have watched i am sure with a learning eye what happened with the nfl with domestic violence.

what does it mean for your league? >> an incredibly serious issue for all leagues. i am ultimately responsible. look, i learn from what people go through. i learned more from a process standpoint that even in the nba, we used to sit back and wait for the criminal justice system to run its course. for example, when kobe bryant was indicted and ultimately, the case was dismissed. he never went to trial. it was dismissed. but that was roughly 10 years ago. even though he had been indicted of a felony, david's reaction the standard was innocent until proven guilty and kobe was an active player.

he went to games after he came from hearings. the standard has changed. if we would have a player accused of a crime certainly indicted of a crime, my sense is now the league would need to conduct its own investigation which is not a comfortable place to be. as someone who has practiced law, i want to be protective of the due process. the accused, whether a player, executive, owner, anyone involved in our league. the wife of a player. the issue here is that often any criminal defense lawyer, when his or her client is facing potential incarceration, will tell the client you can't now waive your fifth amendment right by speaking to the league office. by what standard could we potentially suspend a player only accused of a crime? take a hypothetical where there is a player accused of a crime

and let's say a case where there are witnesses, but no video evidence. and the league is in a position of a credibility determination. let's say a player says, not true. a case where there is video. if there were to be video like in the ray rice case, we just say -- on the other hand, what if the player were to say, that is not what happened, somebody altered the video or misleading camera angle. those are all areas that modern leagues now have to deal with. >> what is the status of your labor negotiations and contract? obviously, we read how you are making more and more money from the television contracts. if i were a player, i would want to say i hope i am participating.

>> my answer would be our design is a revenue-sharing system. the salary cap we were talking about before is determined essentially by taking 50% or 51% of revenue, a sliding formula and it is divided by 30. a lot of nuance. not profit but gross dollar, players get roughly 50% of that dollar. when we get a new tv deal and revenue goes up, players get their share of it. where our status of collective bargaining is, we're in the midst of a 10 year deal. both sides have the opportunity to opt out after six years. we're in the fourth year. presumably, the union and the league will examine where we are at the appropriate time and decide whether it is worth going

back to the negotiation table. the current agreement, which was hard fought by both sides, seems to be operating as it was intended. >> we are in the midst of the all-star game. what does all-star weekend become? >> it has become a sort of basketball spectacular. it is not -- it is an entertainment event. i hear the criticism from people will say, all-star saturday events are not real basketball and you are glorifying dunking. i hear that the game itself, players are not playing defense. i would say for us, it is an opportunity to celebrate the game. for new yorkers, the next several days going into the weekend, you can feel the buzz in town. we are expecting about 200,000 people to come to town.

you can come and experience the game and memorabilia. we have 150 legends coming to town. bill russell, oscar, dr. j, will all be here. for us, the epicenter of the basketball world. >> a celebration and the love of the game. drug testing and what steroids have done in baseball. is it an issue for you? >> i hope not. we test and we have an agreement with our players association where we test for steroids. we test for other performance enhancing drugs. something we are constantly discussing. there is not a sense that it has historically been an issue in our game. i do not want to be naive.

the psychology of it is such there is not a sense that players greatly benefit from doing it. but at the same time, we want to have a strong system so no player ever feels they are losing out somehow and that other players have an edge because they are doing something. that's what you want to be careful of and protect the players. there is never a sense if i am not doing something, i am at a disadvantage. we have strong tests. >> is basketball popular enough internationally today for there to be an asian league and a european league? >> the answer is, is it popular enough, but i do not think the economics are there to do that. at least run by the nba. for example, china is our second-biggest market outside of

the u.s. number two market. it is the number one sport in china. they have a domestic league, the chinese basketball association. yao ming, owns the shanghai market. that league is in the process of growing and developing and the nba assists and helps with programs in china. i do not conceivably see a way in which we could operate nba franchises in china. europe is something david stern talked about for years and would consider that potentially, we could see a division in europe. we are not fighting there yet. if were to do it, we would do well multiple franchises. >> it is a pleasure to have you

here. >> thank you very much. ♪

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