60 Minutes Report Casts Doubt on “Three Cups of Tea”

Greg Mortensen (Photo courtesy National Steinbeck Association)

James Williams
The Paw Print

An investigation by the news magazine program 60 Minutes has cast doubt on the accuracy of philanthropist-turned-author Greg Mortensen’s international best seller “Three Cups of Tea: One Man’s Mission to Promote Peace…One School at a Time,” the book given as a summer reading assignment for incoming Adams State students in the fall of 2008.
The report, which ran last Sunday night on CBS, questions the accuracy of some of the more significant episodes that appear in his book, including Mortensen’s description of how he became lost and disoriented after a failed climb up the K2 Mountain in the Himalayas in 1993. He then wandered into a remote village in Korphe, Pakistan, and the villagers saved his life. When he learned that their village had no school, he promised that he would return to build one for them.
The 60 Minutes report includes statements from the porters who joined Mortensen on his trip disputing the fact that he was lost, and they claim that he only visited Korphe a year later.
The news feature also states that some of the schools that Mortensen’s charitable organization, Central Asia Institute (CAI), is said to have established were either built by others, or don’t exist at all, and that CAI is mismanaged.
60 Minutes began to investigate Mortensen last fall after receiving complaints from former CAI board of directors members, former CAI donors, and charity watchdog groups about how CAI was being run and how truthful Mortensen’s books were.
Jon Krakauer, a mountain climber, best-selling non-fiction author, and an early donor to CAI, told 60 Minutes reporter Steve Kroft that the story about Korphe “is a beautiful story and it’s a lie. I withdrew support over concerns that the charity was mismanaged. In 2002 the CAI board’s treasurer quit and told me Greg uses CAI as his private ATM machine.”
Krakauer added, “He doesn’t know how many school he’s built or what the schools’ costs are. He’s helped thousands of school kids in Afghanistan and Pakistan. He has become the world’s most effective spokesperson for girls’ education in developing countries and he deserves credit for that. Nevertheless, he is threatening to bring it all down…by this fraud and lies.”
Kroft also interviewed Daniel Borochoff, the President of the American Institute of Philanthropy, who said that the one financial statement issued since CAI began 14 years ago illustrates “a lack of transparency and a troublesome intermingling of Mortensen’s personal business interests with the charity’s public purpose. He spends more domestically promoting the importance of building schools in Afghanistan and Pakistan than actually constructing and funding them overseas.”
A substantial amount of CAI’s money is spent on advertising and travel expenses, so Mortensen can promote his books, even though the charity gets no money from the book sales or from Mortensen’s speaking engagements, which often pay him up to $30,000 per engagement.
An investigation into 30 of the 141 schools that CAI’s 2009 tax return claimed to have either built or supported showed that half of the thirty of schools were empty or built by someone else, some that received financial support no longer receive anything from CAI, and some of the empty schools were being used as storage buildings for spinach and hay.
In a statement issued through CAI, Mortensen defended his book, which he co-wrote with David Oliver Relin, and his charity’s humanitarian work.
“I stand by the information conveyed in my book and by the value of C.A.I.’s work in empowering local communities to build and operate schools that have educated more than 60,000 students,” the statement said.
“Three Cups of Tea” was released by Penguin in 2006 and has sold more than 3 million copies. In a statement issued Saturday, the publisher said, “We rely on our authors to tell the truth and they are contractually obligated to do so.”