I've been pretty fascinated by the brouhaha over Three Cups of Tea since the controvery hit about 10 days ago but I've resisted posting because I don't know what to believe. Anyone else with me on this? But I'm starting to doubt Greg Mortenson's intentions, mostly because his new explanations aren't holding up either - and if that turns out to be the case, I'm angling for my $10 back, to spend it on a piece of fiction that actually says fiction. [Full disclosure: I personally know all the Outside people mentioned herein as I used to work at the magazine.]
In a nutshell, author Jon Krakauer and 60 Minutes go after Greg Mortenson on two main points: that he fabricated significant events in Three Cups and that he has mismanaged his charity's funds, both refusing to document expenses and using the charity's dime to promote his books and then pocketing the proceeds. The first charge, that he made up events - including the origin story of how he wandered into the Pakistani village of Korphe and discovered his life's mission - appears to be true. In an interview with Outside editor Alex Heard, Mortenson blames his co-author David Oliver Relin, saying that he synthesized events to create a stronger narrative and no one cared when Mortenson complained. To the second charge, Mortenson acknowledges in the same Outside interview that he did use charity funds to charter a jet for the sake of time management, that people are misreading the charity's tax records, and that an independent law firm has established that they've done nothing wrong.
I think I've fairly synthesized both sides of the argument...and it's still hard to know what to believe. In a lot of ways, it's a he-said-she-said involving a very remote part of the world. Add in a heap of commentary from everybody from the New York Times to your ordinary blogger (hello, world!) and the water just keeps getting muddier and muddier. Interestingly though, Mortenson's side has remained mostly quiet in the face of some pretty damning financial evidence. (If you read Alex Heard's interview, you'll see on pages 4 and 5 that Mortenson doesn't deny using the charity's funds or refute Krakauer's main argument; rather, he justifies it in the way that many of his Internet defenders have, that the ends justify the means.)
I think it's fair to say that Greg Mortenson had good intentions to change the world but he lost them in the hustle-and-bustle along the way. The mismanagement of the charity seems pretty well documented. Whether he absentmindedly misplaced those intentions when things got too big or discarded them when he became a millionaire remains to be seen.
Personally, I'm leaning toward the "changed by fame" interpretation - but then, I was never a big fan of Three Cups of Tea. As I said at the time, the text struck me as manipulative, like a very long PR manifesto. But the biggest issue now, it seems, is that Mortenson's new and improved explanations don't seem to hold water which in my opinion is the thing that makes him look the most guilty.
Take the debate of the origin story, how he got to Korphe and how long he stayed there. In the greater scheme of things, it's probably irrelevant if Relin condensed the incident. But the fact remains, as the 60 Minutes mash-up (start at minute 1:30) adequately proved, that Mortenson repeats Relin's version of the story on tour as truth. Now, he blames Relin for the inaccuracy and says he voiced concerns - but if that's true, why keep repeating an inaccurate tale? (Interestingly, in an interview with the University of Oregon's Etude in 2008, Relin gives a remarkably different account of how he and Mortenson came to work together, compared to Mortenson's version in the Outside interview.) But now it seems that the revised version of the Korphe tale - which Mortenson provided to Outside - isn't plausibly true either. A second Outside article posits that geographically, the facts don't line up.
What can I say, I have a hard time having faith in someone whose story keeps being disproved. I don't know what the truth is, but it's not looking good for Mortenson.
