Greg Mortenson is the subject and coauthor of the bestseller Three Cups of Tea, a book that chronicles his noble plight to build schools in far-flung parts of Pakistan. The tale is heartwarming, inspirational, and, according to allegations made by Jon Krakauer and 60 Minutes in 2011, rife with half truths and outright lies. In his lengthy takedown of Mortenson, Krakauer wrote, “The first eight chapters of Three Cups of Tea are an intricately wrought work of fiction presented as fact. … Mortenson has lied about the noble deeds he has done, the risks he has taken, the people he has met, the number of schools he has built.” I wrote about scandal here.
Yesterday morning Mortenson spoke publicly about the accusations for the first time since the 60 Minutes segment aired. In an exclusive interview with Tom Brokaw, Mortenson appeared neither contrite nor ashamed. He wouldn’t admit to fabricating portions of Three Cups of Tea. Instead he said this: “What I regret is that we were under tremendous pressure to bring about a million words down to 300,000 words.” That’s essentially the same thing that he told Outside Magazine after the scandal first broke: “In order to be convenient, there were some omissions. If we included everything I did from 1993 to 2003 it would take three books to write it. So there were some omissions and compressions . . .” Continue reading
January 13 – 17
One of my New Year’s resolutions is not to write in a journal everyday. I’m terrible at it, even though I wished I loved to scribble daily. I can’t even keep up with my 
