Books

'60 Minutes' Questions Greg Mortenson's Stories

Did Three Cups of Tea author make up facts?

Greg Mortenson is a world-famous philanthropist whose book about Afghanistan, Three Cups of Tea, has sold more than four million copies. Is he a fraud? 60 Minutes says several stories in the book appear to be fabricated and Mortenson's charity, the Central Asia Institute, may have misspent millions of dollars. One popular story Mortenson tells has him getting separated from a hiking expedition on K2, then stumbling into the Pakistani village of Korphe, where he was nursed back to health and later returned to build a school. "It's a story, and it's a lie," says Into Thin Air author Jon Krakauer, who once gave Mortenson's charity $75,000. It appears Mortenson didn't go to Korphe until a year later. There is also evidence that he was never kidnapped by the Taliban, as he claims in the book.