The Trials of Greg Mortenson

It’s been ten months since Jon Krakauer and 60 Minutes alleged that the star of Three Cups of Tea was a literary fraud who used the Central Asia Institute as a personal cash cow, prompting a civil suit and an investigation by Montana’s attorney general. Mortenson still isn’t talking. But the case is heating up, with important developments in the lawsuit and hints that the A.G.’s probe could go badly for CAI.

By: Alex Heard (@alexheard) Watch Video

Mortenson in November 2011, with students of CAI’s Oin Gardhi Women’s Vocational Center in Ishkashim, Afghanistan Photographer: CAI Sarfraz Khan 2011

“Produce all pictures taken of you [Mortenson] at your sister’s funeral.”
As a layman sifting through this material—which you can do here, here, and here—I wondered if the existence of a query means the plaintiffs already know there’s something fishy. Not necessarily. For example, there are two questions about Mortenson’s participation on the Concordia football team—mentioned in Three Cups of Tea—which I took as a hint that he made that up. But one call to the school’s athletic department yielded the answer: Mortenson was on the roster of the Concordia College Cobbers in 1977 and 1978, just like he wrote. So why pester him about it? I suspect plaintiffs might challenge his claim that he was there on a football scholarship, but the school says there’s no record of that either way.

The request connected with his sister’s funeral may have more behind it. In Three Cups of Tea, Mortenson relates that his quest to climb K2 came about after his younger sister, Christa, died of a seizure on July 24, 1992, a date he says early in the book was also her birthday. There’s a death certificate for a Christa E. Mortenson matching that date, but it says Christa was born in June, not July. I’m not certain it’s the same person, but I think the plaintiffs may be exploring whether Mortenson botched her birth date or fudged it to make for a more emotional story. Either might sound strange to a jury.
It’s evident from these questions that Mortenson will be pressed hard about his Himalayan climbing résumé and his role on K2—where, he wrote in Three Cups of Tea, he aspired to reach the summit in 1993, in Christa’s honor, and where he served as an expedition medic. The plaintiffs are likely to contend that Mortenson would have had no chance of being picked for the summit team—that he wasn’t experienced enough—and that, as a nurse on a team with M.D.’s, his medic’s role would have been paltry at best.
Full story here.