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

by Jon Krakauer

  Relations between Mortenson and the CAI board,

  however, continued to deteriorate. “I would talk to people who expressed interest in making a sizable contribution,” says Jennifer Wilson, “but when they tried to contact Greg he wouldn’t get back to them. Other people who actually made big contributions never got follow-ups from Greg. We kept t h r e e c u p s o f d e c e i t 27

  trying to persuade Greg to hire an administrator who would do all the stuff he wasn’t good at, but he refused…. At the time, I didn’t understand. Now that I know about the things he was hiding, I realize he didn’t want anyone looking over his shoulder. That would have been tremendously threatening to him.”

  By early 2002, Mortenson pretty much stopped commu-

  nicating with the board altogether. Exasperated, Wilson quit.

  At the conclusion of a contentious board meeting on September 7, 2002, Hornbein and two other hard-working directors, Gordon Wiltsie and Sally Uhlmann, left the board as well.

  In a letter to the other directors explaining his resignation, Hornbein wrote,

  I am devastated by what has happened…. While my belief in CAI’s mission is undiminished, I can no longer believe that Greg, in spite of his unswerving commitment, has the attributes demanded to lead CAI into its next phase…. Communication is essential to trust. Accountability with transparency underpins trust…. Many of the Board’s efforts to achieve this accountability have been thwarted by Greg, simply by his not responding. It was Greg’s vision and courage that created CAI and caused us to commit our energies. He is a unique individual with many precious attributes. Now, sadly, it is other aspects of Greg, ones I don’t understand, that leave me doubting the future viability of his dream.

  For his part, Mortenson was elated by the departure of

  Wilson, Hornbein, Wiltsie, and Uhlmann, and simply swept the issues they’d raised under the rug. His stonewalling had achieved its desired end, leaving him essentially unaccountable to anyone. In an email to CAI board members and staffers, Mortenson disingenuously gushed,

  I want to express my personal gratitude and thanks to Tom Hornbein, Sally and Gordon for their tremendous effort as Board Directors. Your assistance was a catalyst at a crucial time in CAI’s evolution. From the bottom of my heart, thank j o n k r a k a u e r

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  you. I would also like to extend a belated thanks to Jennifer Wilson for your many years of support that provided continu-ity and stability from the inception of our efforts…. Despite unrest and uncertainty, this past year has been CAI’s most successful year ever in Pakistan…. Onward ho.

  Despite this public effusion of gratitude, in private

  Mortenson told anyone who would listen that Hornbein’s

  criticisms of him were motivated by self-regard and envy.

  Hornbein, Greg explained, simply wanted to take control of CAI in order to create a legacy for himself. Other board members who witnessed Hornbein and Mortenson interact-ing during this period have dismissed Mortenson’s interpretation as preposterous.

  Dealing with Mortenson’s idiosyncrasies was stressful for the entire board. Nonetheless, Jennifer Wilson insists, “No matter how many problems I had working with Greg, I never, ever thought of him as evil. And believe me, I’ve had opportunities where I could have felt that way.” It’s hard for her to be angry with Mortenson, she says, because “he isn’t a normal person. It’s almost like he’s from another planet…. For years, he struggled to find a place in our Western culture. Then, thanks to Jean’s money, Greg figured out how to be extraor-dinarily successful working in a very different culture.” She believes it would be an exercise in futility to expect Mortenson ever to conform to Western norms of doing business—or anything else.

  ★ ★ ★

  mortenson’s bullish pronouncement to the CAI board

  notwithstanding, at the end of 2002 “the organization’s finances were as shaky as ever,” Three Cups of Tea reports on page 295. “So Mortenson decided to defer the raise the board had approved for him, from twenty-eight thousand dollars to thirty-five thousand dollars a year.”

  Although the first statement (about CAI’s shaky fi-

  nances) is true, the latter statement is not. According to t h r e e c u p s o f d e c e i t 29

  CAI financial records, Mortenson’s CAI salary for 2002

  was $41,200, plus $12,087 in employee benefits and deferred compensation; in 2003 his salary increased to $47,197, plus $6,547 in benefits. Furthermore, since 1995, he had been quietly drawing a stipend amounting to $21,792 per year from the AHF Hoerni/Pakistan Fund in addition to his CAI salary package.5 All told, at the time Mortenson claimed he was being paid $28,000, his annual compensation actually exceeded $75,000. One could make a strong case that Mortenson

  deserved every penny of it, given how hard he worked and what a crucial role he played in all aspects of CAI’s operation.

  What’s disturbing is not the amount Mortenson was paid, but that he lied about it—and that dozens of such falsehoods are strewn throughout the book.

  In any case, by the fall of 2003, CAI’s financial difficulties had ended. On April 6 of that year, Mortenson appeared on the cover of Parade magazine. Inside, an article titled

  “He Fights Terror With Books” described how Greg found

  himself in Korphe after retreating from K2 in 1993. After the Korphe villagers nursed him back to health, Mortenson repaid their kindness by building them a school, and in the years that followed he constructed dozens of other schools in northern Pakistan and neighboring Afghanistan. These schools, the article explained, helped to counter the influence of fundamentalist madrassas:

  “In the past 10 years,” says Mortenson, “more than 80,000

  Pakistani and Afghani boys who received hard-line religious instruction in these madrasas were fed directly into the ranks of the Taliban. Islamic extremists know they can use these religious schools as an effective vehicle for recruiting terrorists. The West has so far failed to recognize that offering an alternative by building secular schools is the cheapest and most effective way of combating terrorism.”

  Thirty-four million copies of the magazine were dis-

  tributed across the country. The article included a mailing address, an email address, and a toll-free number for Central j o n k r a k a u e r

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  Asia Institute. Before publication, Mortenson had hired extra staff and set up a phone bank to answer calls to handle the anticipated response. Within a few days, says one of those new employees, “We needed a wheelbarrow for all the mailbags stuffed with checks arriving at the office.” By the end of 2003, the organization had received more than a million dollars in donations. The CAI board of directors (which by then consisted of Mortenson and three loyal admirers) raised Mortenson’s annual salary to $112,000, and Mortenson announced an ambitious plan to use the Parade donations to expand CAI’s programs in Afghanistan.

  In the autumn of 2003, Mortenson flew to Afghanistan

  with funds to construct half a dozen schools in the least-developed corner of that nation, the mysterious Wakhan

  Corridor. According to Three Cups of Tea (pages 314–316), Mortenson enjoyed a long conversation with the king of

  Afghanistan during this trip, aboard a Pakistan International Airlines flight to Kabul:

  The king sat in the window seat. Mortenson recognized

  him from pictures on the old Afghan currency he’d seen for sale in the bazaars. At eighty-nine, Zahir Shah looked far older than his official portrait as he stared out the window of the PIA 737 at the country he’d been exiled from for nearly thirty years.

  Aside from the king’s security detail and a small crew of stewardesses, Mortenson was alone on the short flight from Islamabad to Kabul with Afghanistan’s former monarch.

  When Shah turned away from the window, he locked eyes with Mortenson across the aisle.

  “As-Salaam Alaaikum, sir,” Mortenson said.

  “And to you, sir,” Shah
replied.

  When Mortenson told the king that he was en route to

  northern Afghanistan’s seldom-visited Wakhan region to

  build schools, Zaher Shah patted the empty seat beside him and invited Greg to sit there. For the remainder of the flight they discussed the remoteness of the Wakhan, the recent t h r e e c u p s o f d e c e i t 31

  invasion of Iraq, and how the latter was diverting crucial American resources and personnel from Afghanistan.

  Zahir Shah placed his hand, with its enormous lapis ring, on Mortenson’s. “I’m glad one American is here at least,” he said.

  “The man you want to see up north is Sadhar Khan. He’s a mujahid. But he cares about his people.”

  “So I’ve heard,” Mortenson said.

  Zahir Shah pulled a calling card out of the breast pocket of the business suit he wore under his striped robe and called for one of his security guards to bring his valise. Then the king held his thumb to an inkpad and pressed his print on the back of the card. “It may be helpful if you give this to Commandhan Khan,” he said. “Allah be with you. And go with my blessing.”

  It’s a memorable account, layered with vivid particulars.

  It also happens to be fictitious. His Majesty Zaher Shah died in 2007, but when I contacted a close associate of the king to verify Mortenson’s story, he forwarded my query to Mostapha Zaher, the monarch’s grandson and successor. Zaher’s reply was immediate and unequivocal:

  I wish to categorically state, and in no uncertain terms, that my late grandfather had NEVER taken the mentioned flight PIA 737 from Islamabad to Kabul during the Holy Month

  Ramadhan of 2003. As a matter of fact, he has NEVER

  traveled on any PIA flights from 1973 to 2007, the year of his passing away [emphasis by Zaher]. The information provided by the person [Mortenson] is simply not factual.

  ★ ★ ★

  in the wake of the Parade article, as Mortenson’s fame continued to grow and the donations kept increasing, his grandiosity and mendacity only became more pronounced.

  “Greg was horrible to work for,” says an ex-employee whom Mortenson hired when the CAI staff expanded to make the most of the Parade donations.

  j o n k r a k a u e r

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  “It was very important for him to test people, to test their loyalty,” explains another staffer who was brought on around the same time. “He played a lot of mind games.

  His management style was to divide and conquer. He’d

  lean forward, tell you how important you were to him, then badmouth other staff so you felt like he was confiding in you. But the staff talked to each other, so we learned he was badmouthing each of us to everyone else. We were all like,

  ‘You’re kidding! That’s what he told you?’

  “Working for Greg was like being on a roller coaster,”

  this ex-employee continues. “One day he was telling you how great you were, and then for no apparent reason he would give you the icy treatment…. We went through a two- or three-month period where Greg wasn’t communicating with the

  staff at all.”

  Three Cups of Tea never mentions this aspect of Mortenson’s personality, although it frequently refers to his chronic tardiness. David Relin, Mortenson’s co-author, writes in the introduction, “During the two years we worked together

  on this book, Mortenson was often so maddeningly late for appointments that I considered abandoning the project.” On page 39, Mortenson’s mother says, “Greg has never been on time in his life…. Ever since he was a boy, Greg has always operated on African time.” In 1998, Mortenson showed up three weeks late for a rendezvous in China with his friend Scott Darsney, who was kept waiting in Beijing until Greg finally appeared. Mortenson’s aversion to punctuality is presented in Three Cups as if it were an endearing quirk. To a number of people who worked with Mortenson over the years, however, his habitual lateness—like his habitual lying—seemed more pathological than quirky.

  ★ ★ ★

  until recently, I didn’t know that the most dramatic

  anecdotes in Three Cups of Tea were fabricated, but by 2004 I had begun to suspect that Mortenson was improperly using CAI funds. After Tom Hornbein, Sally Uhlmann, and

  t h r e e c u p s o f d e c e i t 33

  Gordon Wiltsie resigned from the CAI board of directors, I asked Wiltsie, who had served as the board treasurer, why he left. “Greg,” he replied, “regards CAI as his personal ATM.”

  Wiltsie described how Mortenson would routinely charge

  personal expenses to CAI, and seldom provided receipts or other documentation for any of his expenditures, no matter how persistently Wiltsie pleaded with him to do so.

  At that point, I had donated more than $75,000 to CAI.

  On March 23, 2004, I sent a fax to Mortenson’s office:

  I have decided to suspend my financial support of CAI for the indefinite future. I didn’t make this decision lightly. After interviewing several of the people who recently left the board of directors I lost confidence in Greg’s accountability. I feel that I cannot continue to give such large sums of money (they seem large to me, at any rate) to an organization run with so little oversight and such lax accounting practices. It is possible that I may decide to support CAI again at some future date.

  But not until CAI has installed a strong, active board of directors who keep close tabs on how the organization is run. Make no mistake: I still believe in CAI’s mission, but I am made extremely uneasy by Greg’s way of running the show. Although I don’t want to make any public statements that would have a negative impact on Greg’s work, I no longer feel comfortable providing financial backing, or lending my name, to CAI.

  Debbie Raynor, CAI’s chief financial officer at the time, remembers this missive well, because it matched her own experiences with Mortenson so precisely. When my letter rattled out of the CAI fax machine, she had been trying, unsuccessfully, to persuade Mortenson to document his expenses for the previous eight months. She had come on board as CFO in July 2003, and her duties soon expanded to include staff supervisor and board treasurer. By the summer of 2004, however, Mortenson’s conduct made it impossible for Raynor to continue working for CAI in good conscience. As she

  explained in a memo to the CAI board of directors,

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  there were no meaningful financial policies or procedures in place when I started my employment. I endeavored to rectify that situation and bring about necessary and much needed financial controls…. These new policies were fully discussed and implemented with full approval by Mr. Mortenson. The staff readily complied with these new policies ensuring an accurate account of expenses. However, Mr. Mortenson has failed to comply in any meaningful manner with these policies…. Since the start of my employment, Mr. Mortenson has spent over $100,000 on CAI’s credit cards. Mr. Mortenson has never provided any receipts for these expenses, and repeatedly ignored my requests for their submission…. Mr. Mortenson has refused to submit even one travel voucher…. In order to allocate indirect expenses, it is imperative that I receive time sheets from all employees. Since March 2004, Mr. Mortenson has failed to submit a time sheet….

  On May 27, 2004, I again reported to the Board the serious situation as it related to overseas expenses. At that time, there was over $100,000 in unaccounted overseas expenses. Mr.

  Mortenson agreed to provide all documentation for overseas expenses. To date, he has not produced the promised documents in any meaningful manner. In fact, currently CAI has spent over $270,000 in cash and wire transfers [emphasis by Raynor] without proper documentation as to the disbursement of this money. There is no record to who ultimately received these monies or the manner in which it was spent.

  Mr. Mortenson has reported that measures have been

  implemented to resolve the unsubstantiated overseas documentation; however, no specifics have been forthcoming.

  In August 2004, I learned that informat
ion given to me

  to be placed in the Annual Report is untrue and therefore fraudulent.

  Unfortunately, Mr. Mortenson has determined that he has no need of providing financial information to the CFO. These circumstances are untenable. I am unable to fulfill the duties and responsibilities as CFO and Staff Supervisor. Thus, I had no alternative but to resign from CAI effective September 3, 2004.

  t h r e e c u p s o f d e c e i t 35

  ★ ★ ★

  in march 2006, Viking Penguin published Three Cups of Tea in hardcover. Later that year, the CAI board of directors

  increased Mortenson’s annual salary to $145,000. When the paperback edition of Three Cups came out in January 2007, the book vaulted to the top of the New York Times paperback nonfiction bestseller list and remained at number one for forty-three weeks. To capitalize on the resulting publicity, Mortenson resolved to turn CAI “into a promotion-and-fund-raising machine” by launching what amounted to a

  perpetual book tour—an exhausting schedule of public

  appearances that is still ongoing (as of April 2011). This relentless marketing campaign has reaped impressive rewards. In 2006, CAI’s total revenue amounted to $1.6

  million. In 2007 it was $3.8 million. In 2008, it ballooned to $14.1 million, and in 2009 (the most recent year for which CAI has filed a tax return), it was $14.3 million. In 2010, according to statements by Mortenson, CAI received more than $20 million in donations.

  Mortenson has not been shy about taking credit for the