Jon Krakauer: Three Cups of Deceit (Greg Mortenson's story-telling)

[Hannah Bell]

Three Cups of Deceit
How Greg Mortenson, Humanitarian Hero, Lost His Way

Greg Mortenson has built a global reputation as a selfless humanitarian and children’s crusader, and he’s been nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize. He is also not what he appears to be. As acclaimed author Jon Krakauer discovered, Mortenson has not only fabricated substantial parts of his bestselling books Three Cups of Tea and Stones into Schools, but has also misused millions of dollars donated by unsuspecting admirers like Krakauer himself. This is the tragic tale of good intentions gone very wrong.

http://www.byliner.com/


Pretty serious fraud....

[aquart]

1. What good intentions?

Did the money go to schools or to Mortenson?

[Hannah Bell]

2. it appears that a good deal of it -- like all the profits from his books, for example -- went to

mortenson. plus he drew from his "charity" for beaucoup undocumented expenses. plus his charity submitted fraudulent reports. plus his books are a fabric of lies.

read the story, there's more.

the authorities are looking into 7-23 million owing to the irs: that's how fraudulent.

more here: montana investigating his charity:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=439x933028

meanwhile, mortenson suddenly has heart problems & is incommunicado.

[sabrina 1]

3. My SIL gave me the book 'Three Cups of Tea'

a few weeks ago. She and several other people told me it was a beautiful book and they were sure I would love it.

I looked Greg Morenson up a while ago, not because I thought he was a fraud, but during the floods in Pakistan as I had heard about his books and was wondering about his schools there. What I did notice was there wasn't much info on the schools eg, and I am not sure of this, but wasn't he appointed to some position by Bush, like a peacemaking position re Pakistan and Afghanistan?

He struck me, from what I was reading, as pretty rightwing, even a fundy in some ways so I wasn't really interested in reading his books, until my SIL gave one to me.

I felt like the story of how came to build those schools was pretty sketchy but wasn't interested enough to do much research. To be honest, I am not really surprised by all of this. It probably helped that I had not read his books before reading about HIM but I did have an uneasy feeling about him.

[Hannah Bell]

4. i had a similar feeling, exacerbated by being peripherally involved in one of his

speaking appearances.

$30K for a speech seemed a bit steep. the fact that he had bodyguards seemed weird.

a lot of my friends read his book & thought it was wonderful. i thought it was crap.

[xchrom]

5. wow -- that's a bit jarring...bodyguards?

i can't imagine a threat against him? before stuff like this coming out that is.

[Hannah Bell]

6. which is one of the reasons i thought he might be some kind of intelligence.

i figured it must be something to do with what he was doing in afghanistan/pakistan.

couldn't imagine his public persona in the US would make him a target for assassins.

but read the krakauer piece -- there's a lot there.

[Hannah Bell]

7. kik

[Starry Messenger]

8. k&r

My mother has been pressing these books on me, but I wasn't really interested. She really loved these, I feel bad for people who get sucked into this stuff.

[DemReadingDU]

9. Is Krakauer's article free?

I tried to download the pdf, but received an error.

[Hannah Bell]

10. yes, for the price of your email address. i didn't have any problem --

[DemReadingDU]

11. It was a problem with Firefox, but downloaded fine with IE

[mod mom]

12. My daughter's middle school has been raising money for this organization

since reading "Three Cups of Tea". Luckily the $ has not been sent yet so our donations WILL go to a worthy cause.

[Hannah Bell]

13. imagine how localities who paid $30K to hear him talk are feeling.