By Lloyd Grove and Mike Giglio, The Daily Beast
A bombshell 60 Minutes report has left the writer's Three Cups of Tea memoir -- which earned him millions and made him a humanitarian folk hero -- in tatters. Lloyd Grove and Mike Giglio report on the fallout.
When 60 Minutes was finished with superstar philanthropist and U.S. military adviser Greg Mortenson on Sunday night, the author of Three Cups of Tea-a 2006 bestselling memoir of adventures and good works in Afghanistan and Pakistan-was in a million little pieces.
Related story on The Daily Beast: Al Sharpton: Obama's Go-To Black Leader
Correspondent Steve Kroft reported that key anecdotes in Mortenson's inspirational narrative-which launched him as a humanitarian folk hero, attracted $60 million in donations to his nonprofit Central Asia Institute, and personally earned him millions of dollars in book royalties and lecture fees-appear to have been fabricated. (Click here to watch the full report.)
"Another hero bites the dust," MTV founder Tom Freston, a frequent visitor to Afghanistan, told The Daily Beast. Freston lived in Kabul in the late 1970s, traveling the hardscrabble country as a garment exporter. "And it's especially bad in this case, as there are so few heroes in that troubled part of the world."
Afghan media mogul Saad Mohseni, whose Moby Group runs the nation's dominant television and radio outlets, reacted with sorrow at the report.
"If the allegations are true," Mohseni told The Daily Beast, "then it is a tremendous blow to humanitarian and education related nongovernment work in Afghanistan and Pakistan, as many in the West will shy away from helping similar projects in the future." Mohseni added: "Mr. Mortenson was not that well known in Afghanistan and his fame in the U.S. surprised many of us in Kabul... However, the man needs to be given an opportunity to defend himself."
Notably false, Kroft reported, were Mortenson's heartwarming tale of how the simple mountain villagers in Korphe, Pakistan, saved his life after he got lost during a perilous descent of K2, the world's second highest peak; how he repaid their kindness by returning to build them a school; and how he was subsequently kidnapped for eight days by the Taliban.
"It's a beautiful story, and it's a lie," best-selling author Jon Krakauer, a former friend and financial supporter of Mortenson's, told 60 Minutes, which offered strong evidence that Mortenson was never lost or separated from fellow mountain climbers during his 1993 descent, that he never visited or even heard of Korphe until a year afterward, and that the men he identified as Taliban kidnappers were actually his tour guides.
Mortenson's book agent, Elizabeth Kaplan, declined to comment on the 60 Minutes report, writing in an email to The Daily Beast: "I'm on a runway at Newark airport heading for Prague." His co-author, Portland, Oregon, journalist David Oliver Relin, could not be reached. The public relations executive at Viking-Penguin, Paul Slovak, didn't respond to our email, and Viking-Penguin refused to answer 60 Minutes' questions or speak to Kroft, who, in a classic ambush scene, tried to grill his quarry at a book signing, only to be led away by security.
But the embattled author did try to defend himself to his hometown newspaper, The Bozeman, Montana, Daily Chronicle. "I hope these allegations and attacks, the people doing these things, know this could be devastating for tens of thousands of girls, for the sake of Nielsen ratings and Emmys," Mortenson told the paper in a phone interview on Friday, after 60 Minutes began publicizing its exclusive. In a later statement, he conceded that his account of his descent from K2 was "a compressed version of events that took place in the fall of 1993."
Kroft's revelations are much more serious than a publishing scandal akin to the exposure of James Frey's largely fantasized 2003 autobiography, A Million Little Pieces. Until Sunday night, the 53-year-old Mortenson was so respected an authority on the exotic region that Washington think tanks such as the Aspen Institute regularly invited him to speak. Top American generals such as David Petraeus and Stanley McChrystal ardently sought Mortenson's advice and depended on him to set up meetings between he U.S. military and village elders.
When 60 Minutes was finished with superstar philanthropist and U.S. military adviser Greg Mortenson on Sunday night, the author of Three Cups of Tea-a 2006 bestselling memoir of adventures and good works in Afghanistan and Pakistan-was in a million little pieces.
Related story on The Daily Beast: Al Sharpton: Obama's Go-To Black Leader
Correspondent Steve Kroft reported that key anecdotes in Mortenson's inspirational narrative-which launched him as a humanitarian folk hero, attracted $60 million in donations to his nonprofit Central Asia Institute, and personally earned him millions of dollars in book royalties and lecture fees-appear to have been fabricated. (Click here to watch the full report.)
"Another hero bites the dust," MTV founder Tom Freston, a frequent visitor to Afghanistan, told The Daily Beast. Freston lived in Kabul in the late 1970s, traveling the hardscrabble country as a garment exporter. "And it's especially bad in this case, as there are so few heroes in that troubled part of the world."
Afghan media mogul Saad Mohseni, whose Moby Group runs the nation's dominant television and radio outlets, reacted with sorrow at the report.
"If the allegations are true," Mohseni told The Daily Beast, "then it is a tremendous blow to humanitarian and education related nongovernment work in Afghanistan and Pakistan, as many in the West will shy away from helping similar projects in the future." Mohseni added: "Mr. Mortenson was not that well known in Afghanistan and his fame in the U.S. surprised many of us in Kabul... However, the man needs to be given an opportunity to defend himself."
Notably false, Kroft reported, were Mortenson's heartwarming tale of how the simple mountain villagers in Korphe, Pakistan, saved his life after he got lost during a perilous descent of K2, the world's second highest peak; how he repaid their kindness by returning to build them a school; and how he was subsequently kidnapped for eight days by the Taliban.
"It's a beautiful story, and it's a lie," best-selling author Jon Krakauer, a former friend and financial supporter of Mortenson's, told 60 Minutes, which offered strong evidence that Mortenson was never lost or separated from fellow mountain climbers during his 1993 descent, that he never visited or even heard of Korphe until a year afterward, and that the men he identified as Taliban kidnappers were actually his tour guides.
Mortenson's book agent, Elizabeth Kaplan, declined to comment on the 60 Minutes report, writing in an email to The Daily Beast: "I'm on a runway at Newark airport heading for Prague." His co-author, Portland, Oregon, journalist David Oliver Relin, could not be reached. The public relations executive at Viking-Penguin, Paul Slovak, didn't respond to our email, and Viking-Penguin refused to answer 60 Minutes' questions or speak to Kroft, who, in a classic ambush scene, tried to grill his quarry at a book signing, only to be led away by security.
But the embattled author did try to defend himself to his hometown newspaper, The Bozeman, Montana, Daily Chronicle. "I hope these allegations and attacks, the people doing these things, know this could be devastating for tens of thousands of girls, for the sake of Nielsen ratings and Emmys," Mortenson told the paper in a phone interview on Friday, after 60 Minutes began publicizing its exclusive. In a later statement, he conceded that his account of his descent from K2 was "a compressed version of events that took place in the fall of 1993."
Kroft's revelations are much more serious than a publishing scandal akin to the exposure of James Frey's largely fantasized 2003 autobiography, A Million Little Pieces. Until Sunday night, the 53-year-old Mortenson was so respected an authority on the exotic region that Washington think tanks such as the Aspen Institute regularly invited him to speak. Top American generals such as David Petraeus and Stanley McChrystal ardently sought Mortenson's advice and depended on him to set up meetings between he U.S. military and village elders.
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