By victor mickunas

April 23, 2011 3:03 PM | Link to this

HLee, let me guess, you read the book and you found it inspiring, right? 60 Minutes gave Greg many opportunities to respond. He did not. In fact, when Steve Croft from 60 Minutes approached Greg at a book signing and tried to talk to him, Greg’s reaction was priceless: he wouldn’t talk to him, he called security, then he fled the scene through the back door and bailed out on all his eager fans who wanted his autograph. I agree that Greg has done some splendid things to bring attention to this troubling situation. I too, read the book, right after it came out, and I have to say that my BS detector was pushing into the red in a number of sections. This is a shame. And I have to think that he brought all it on himself.

By H. Lee

April 23, 2011 10:24 AM | Link to this

I’m late to this (non-) party, but I’ve been thinking about this for awhile. From what I’ve read and seen so far about Greg Mortenson, I think the verdict on his actions should at least be “Not proven.” The 60 Minutes crew interviewed his guides on the mountain, and the guides swore that Greg had not been lost, as he claimed to have been. Well, let’s apply the same critical attitude toward the guides. What kind of business could the guides look forward to if they admitted they’d lost one of their clients on the mountain? Same with the folks who swore they weren’t Taliban — how many members of the Taliban are going to claim that identity when faced with a Western camera crew? Mortenson started a number of schools for girls in Afghanistan. That’s a real accomplishment, one that most people would not even attempt. What he did was admirable. He may have been sloppy about keeping track of the money, but I don’t know that he’s been actually greedy. Does he own a mansion and five BMWs and a private jet? Does he keep a “stable” of pretty young girls at his house? I don’t think so. What he’s done, or failed to do, is set up the proper financial oversight for the funds he collected. It’s an amateur’s mistake, not a Bernie Madoff moment. It does seem probable that Greg lied about stumbling into a Sherpa village and being nursed back to health. Or maybe he just remembered it that way, but in fact the guides were the ones who rescued him. Or maybe he just wanted to sell more books with a tall tale (like Captain John Smith and his fable about Pocahontas saving him from death by a club). If so, Greg probably figured the village he named was so remote no one would ever find it to challenge his story. He forgot about the Internet. Jon Krakauer seems to be the whistle-blower who attracted the attention of 60 Minutes, and I wonder a bit about his motives. Krakauer wrote “Into Thin Air” about the tragic 1996 climb on Everest, and perhaps he feels these are by golly his mountains. Or maybe his motives were (mostly purely) righteous indignation that Greg had gotten away with, and made money from, a bunch of lies about mountain-climbing, which is Krakauer’s passion. In any case, I can’t help feeling it’s rather a shame that Greg has been discredited. His charity was a good one, and now it’s dead.