Renowned mountain climber Pat Morrow has seen first-hand the results of Greg Mortenson’s relentless drive to bring hope – one school at a time – to impoverished, mountainous regions of Pakistan and Afghanistan.
Mr. Morrow, the second Canadian to stand atop Mount Everest and the first climber in the world to scale the highest peaks of all seven continents, spent a month travelling with Mr. Mortenson through some of the isolated areas where dozens of his new schools were up and running and flourishing.
Now Mr. Mortenson is under fire from hard-hitting investigative reports by well-known chronicler Jon Krakauer and the CBS flagship public-affairs show 60 Minutes.
Both charge that parts of his worldwide bestselling book, Three Cups of Tea, never happened. They further say he has mishandled funds and exploited his enormously successful charity to promote his own speaking engagements and books.
Mr. Mortenson vigorously rejects the allegations, while admitting that some incidents in Three Cups of Tea did not unfold exactly as described.
Mr. Morrow is in his corner. He says no one should doubt Mr. Mortenson’s good work.
“He’s a genuine guy, who’s really busted his butt to help these people over the years,” Mr. Morrow said, even as the attorney-general of Mr. Mortenson’s home state of Montana launched an inquiry this week into his charity, the Central Asian Institute.
“I was deeply impressed by the way he’s managed to help people overlooked by other aid agencies, forever.”
Mr. Morrow and his wife, Baiba, were hired by Mr. Mortenson several years ago to do a promotional film on a network of new schools established in northern Pakistan and Afghanistan.
The CBS exposé left him cold. “While I don’t condone Greg’s sloppy business practices, nor do I warm to the fervent righteousness of the 60 Minutes witch hunt,” Mr. Morrow said.
He also complained that the TV show used several of his film clips without consulting him or providing credit.
Mr. Morrow said no foreign-aid project he has documented over the years impressed him more than Mr. Mortenson’s efforts.
“What stands out is that local people are doing the work for themselves,” he said. “It’s all basic, grassroots stuff. A classroom, a teacher, books, and the villages maintain the schools … From what I saw, I’m convinced the Central Asian Institute’s priceless gift of education will endure long after the dust has settled from this muckraking enterprise.”
Among many accusations contained in his lengthy article published on byliner.com, Three Cups of Deceit, Mr. Krakauer said many of Mr. Mortenson’s schools now sit empty.
“Mortenson has lied about the noble deeds he has done, the risks he has taken, the people he has met, the number of schools he has built,” said Mr. Krakauer, author of the bestselling account of a doomed Everest expedition, Into Thin Air, and a former contributor to Mr. Mortenson’s charity.
But Mr. Morrow said he saw no sign of ghost schools. “The ones we witnessed were built and they were working. They were all over the mountain areas.”
The most damaging attacks against Mr. Mortenson’s reputation involve events central to the appeal of Three Cups of Tea.
After a failed attempt to climb K2 in the early 1990s, Mr. Mortenson told how, dazed and undernourished, he was taken in and nursed back to health by generous villagers. When he left, according to his book, he promised to return and build a school. That started a lifelong mission, dedicated to building schools, with a strong emphasis on educating girls.
Mr. Krakauer and 60 Minutes said Mr. Mortenson spent only a few hours in the village after his failed climb, and promised the new school a full year later.
In an interview with his hometown paper, The Bozeman Daily Chronicle, Mr. Mortenson agreed that the tale outlined in the book was actually “a compressed version of events” unfolding over a longer period of time.
Investigators also discounted Mr. Mortenson’s claim that he was kidnapped and held for eight days by gun-toting Taliban, citing interviews with witnesses who called the entire event a friendly encounter. One of the alleged kidnappers is now threatening to sue. Mr. Mortenson retorted that he tried to befriend his captors so they would let him go, which they did.
The swirl of controversy is bound to cause at least some of his millions of readers to wonder whether they were partly hoodwinked by yet another bestselling, non-fiction account that turned out to be just a little too good to be true.
Concerning Mr. Mortenson’s charity that raises millions of dollars every year, its lawyers have promised to co-operate fully with Montana’s inquiry, prompted by allegations that more money was spent on non-charity work than building schools.
In a column in Thursday’s New York Times, two-time Pulitzer Prize winner Nicholas Kristof, who has reported positively on Mr. Mortenson’s schools in Afghanistan, said the current furor “breaks my heart.”
Regardless of how the allegations pan out, said Mr. Kristof, there is “nothing imaginary” about the way American donors and Afghan villagers put aside differences and prejudices “to build schools – and a better world.”
In Bozeman, meanwhile, residents could talk of little else but the sudden spate of allegations against a man they consider a local hero.
“He’s certainly the most famous person in town,” local reporter Gail Schontzler said. “A lot of people think this is all a hatchet job.”
