THE OTHER SIDE

Greg Mortenson Responds to ’60 Minutes’

Insists that his books are true, but simplified.

Attempting to clear his good name, author Greg Mortenson has issued a response to a damning 60 Minutes report that alleged discrepancies in his accounts of his humanitarian works in Afghanistan and Pakistan, which he writes about in his bestsellers Three Cups of Tea and Stones Into Schools. Mortenson insists that all of the experiences he described were true, but he does admit that in some instances, like the story of his 1993 visit to the village of Korphe after a failed attempt to climb K2, events were simplified to tell a “complicated story.” As for his allegations that he was kidnapped by the Taliban, (which his Pakistani contact, Mansur Khan Mahsud, strenuously denies in a report in The Daily Beast) he’s sticking to it. “It was against my will, and my passport and money were taken from me. I was not mistreated or harmed, but I was also not allowed to leave.”