Accidental Blogger

Ho- hum. Another inspirational memoir that isn't. Author/charity tycoon Greg Mortenson, who shot into fame as the climber who was so touched by being nursed back to health by poor villagers after getting lost on a climbing expedition in a remote part of Pakistan, that he founded a trust to build and educate young Pakistani and Afghani girls, narrated to great effect in his bestseller 'Three Cups of Tea', is, according to this CBS exposé, a fraud.

"Greg Mortenson's books have made him a publishing phenomenon and sought-after speaker on the lecture circuit, where he has attained a cult-like status. He regularly draws crowds of several thousand people and $30,000 per engagement.

And everywhere Mortenson goes, he brings an inspirational message built around a story that forms the cornerstone of Three Cups of Tea and his various ventures – how, in 1993, he tried and failed to reach the summit of K2, the world's second tallest mountain, to honor his dead sister, how he got lost and separated from his party on the descent and stumbled into a tiny village called Korphe.

…

"Mortenson (speaking on stage): And when a young girl named Chocho came up to me and said…

Mortenson (speaking on another stage): Can you help us build a school? I made a rash promise that day and I said, "I promise I'll help build a school." Little did I know it would change my life forever.

It's a powerful and heart-warming tale that has motivated millions of people to buy his book and contribute nearly $60 million to his charity.

Jon Krakauer: It's a beautiful story, and it's a lie.

Jon Krakauer is also a best-selling author and mountaineer, who wrote Into Thin Air and Into The Wild. He was one of Mortenson's earliest backers, donating $75,000 to his non-profit organization."

Fabrications range from botched dates and timeframes, dramatic narratives where the reality wasn't as thrilling, including a claim of having been kidnapped by the Taliban, which turned out to be a fake story that sullied the reputations of upstanding Pakistanis.

"Mortenson (in an interview): One of the most compelling experiences I had was in July of '96…I went to the area to find a place to build a school. And what happened is, I got kidnapped by the Taliban for eight days.

The kidnapping story was featured in Three Cups of Tea, and referred to in his follow-up best seller, Stones Into Schools, with a 1996 photograph of his alleged captors.

We managed to locate four men who were there when the photo was taken – two of them actually appear in the picture. All of them insist they are not Taliban and that Greg Mortenson was not kidnapped. They also gave us another photo of the group with Mortenson holding the AK-47.

One of the men, Mansur Khan Mahsud, is the research director of a respected think tank in Islamabad and has produced scholarly articles published in the U.S."

That's not to say that the Central Asia Institute hasn't done some good, though it apparently has wildly exaggerated the number of schools built, according to the CBS investigation. Mortenson tries to defend himself against the allegations here. But many allegations of financial irregularities haven't been satisfactorily answered, the explanation from the CAI board of directors notwithstanding.

Regarding the schools, for instance, the CBS transcript reads:

"The IRS tax return Central Asia Institute filed last year included a list of 141 schools that it claimed to have built or supported in Pakistan and Afghanistan. Over the past six months, we visited or looked into nearly 30 of them. Some were performing well, but roughly half were empty, built by somebody else, or not receiving support at all. Some were being used to store spinach, or hay for livestock; others had not received any money from Mortenson's charity in years."

Mortenson may not be the first to milk the public's fondness for inspirational charitable figures, but it is a sad testament to the ability of a sweet inspirational story to sway and prey on the minds of millions of gullible givers, including, most notably, $100,000 of the Nobel prize money from President Barack Obama. My own contribution to the $60 million is the price that I paid to purchase the book. Countless other similar stories abound, doubtless, as do a zillion Pennies4Peace fundraisers, pet projects of many school kids in schools across the US, that feed into the CAI's coffers.

Questions also linger about Mortenson's connection to the US army in Afghanistan/Pakistan , for he was definitely a huge asset to them.

"According to the New York Times, Mortenson has spoken at dozens of military bases and had lunch with General David Petraeus, the architect of the US's Iraq surge and the man chosen to replace McChrystal.

He has also brokered and participated in many meetings between tribal leaders and the US military in the region, where his local knowledge has proved invaluable."

As Ruchira herself pointed out late last year, Houston socialite Joann Herring had chosen Mortenson as her new Charlie.

"She has a new partner – a new "Charlie," she says, referring to the late congressman – to help lead the effort past Washington's reservations: Greg Mortenson, known for his success with building schools in the volatile border region of Pakistan and Afghanistan, plans to help direct Herring's group of nonprofits. Mortenson has advised President Barack Obama and Gen. David Petraeus, the commander of American and NATO forces in Afghanistan, on working with locals in the region. His pioneering aid efforts were documented in the book Three Cups of Tea."

Maybe the questions we should be asking are not only about what this tale of another idol with feet of clay means to us, but who benefits from chopping off the idols' heads. 

Three cups of tea – the first cup is business, the second is for friendship, the third makes you family, according to a quote on the book's blurb. It's highly unfortunate that those sweet inspirational moments have been buried by the mountain of salt that is needed to give all those deceived, their pinches of salt.