The Chief wrote:If the dude has nothing to hide and he is on the up and up, why is he running from 60 Minutes? And why have several of the folks over the past 8 years that were running the accounting aspect of CAI, quitting, and then reporting their quitting was due to negligent spending ops?

E.G.:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/60_Minutes ... celeration

T Sharp wrote:- Were you there when Mortenson was hooded and kept for 8 days?

- Were you or Krakauer there when Mortenson came off of K2?

The supposed Taliban "Captor" individuals in the photo were interviewed by 60 Minutes. All said nothing of the sort occurred. That they in fact were hired by Mort to protect Mort. And as was posted above, when does the Taliban hand a captured infidel an AK and then allows them to be in the middle of a photo as part of the group???

The two porters that brought Mort down from K2 were interviewed during this report and they both confirmed that nothing as Mort states in his opening chapters in the book which he describes on his descent of K2, ever occurred. As did his partner.

From the recent Bozeman article....

"On its website Friday evening, "60 Minutes" also reported that it interviewed three men whom Mortenson photographed and described as Taliban fighters who kidnapped him in 1996. They denied to CBS being Taliban and said they had protected, not kidnapped Mortenson. One man charged the writer's version was "totally false," a tale told "to sell his book."

Mortenson responded that the men, armed with AK-47s, had "detained" him, kept his passport and money, and had not allowed him to leave for eight days.

"I thought it best to befriend the people detaining me," he said, adding they may have perceived it differently.


Kroft's letter pointed to CAI's 2009 nonprofit tax statement to the IRS, and asked why only 41 percent of the money it raised actually went to pay for schools in Afghanistan and Pakistan."

CAI's public 990 tax form shows that in 2009 the charity had $14 million in income. It spent $3.9 million on schools overseas, and $4.6 million on travel, guest lectures and educating Americans about the plight of Pakistani and Afghan children. It paid Mortenson $180,000 in salary and other compensation.

MoapaPk wrote:

The Chief wrote:If the dude has nothing to hide and he is on the up and up, why is he running from 60 Minutes? And why have several of the folks over the past 8 years that were running the accounting aspect of CAI, quitting, and then reporting their quitting was due to negligent spending ops?

E.G.:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/60_Minutes ... celeration

Chief, what is this obsession about Mortenson being unwilling to talk to a camera crew that blind sided him at a public forum? He is the executive director of a multi-million dollar not for profit organization...not a position he particularly relishes by the way, and anything he might say could ruin the prospects of that organization in the future, he was correct to run, and leave it for the lawyers to respond to the unfounded accusations! Cripes, what would you have said? Remember, Mortenson is just a regular dude, doing a marvelous thing, in a world of sharks...he probably feels a whole lot safer in Afghanistan these days!

The Chief wrote:

T Sharp wrote:- Were you there when Mortenson was hooded and kept for 8 days?

- Were you or Krakauer there when Mortenson came off of K2?

All the supposed Taliban "Captor" individuals in the photo were interviewed by 60 Minutes. All said nothing of the sort occurred. That they in fact were hired to protect Mort. And as was posted above, when does the Taliban hand a captured infidel an AK and then allows them to be in the middle of a photo as part of the group???

The two porters that brought Mort down from K2 were interviewed during this report and they both confirmed that nothing as Mort states in his opening chapters in the book which he describes on his descent of K2, ever occurred. As did his partner.

This interview by 60 minutes is not sourced, and as such is hearsay, impeachable in my book.
The porters have a dog in the fight, it does not look good to loose a client, and maybe the partner does too, there were sexual improprieties on that climb!
Hearsay evidence to drag down the character of Mortenson, that is the real bull shit!

Mortenson and the CAI have done an incredible in Pakistan and Afghanistan. No one can take that away from him.

Hearsay evidence to drag down the character of Mortenson, that is the real bull shit!

Do you know Mortenson personally, enough to judge his character?

C'mon!

The dude spends more of the donations on his personal needs in order to promote his books than he does in building schools.

You guys aren't serious about standing by this dude when he even says that his original story is not "literally true".

And this...

"Mortenson responded that he gets a royalty of about 40 or 50 cents per book, and that he has contributed more than $100,000 of his own money to CAI, which has more than offset the book royalties."

Are you aware that the dude has sold over 6.3 million copies of both books. That is well over 3 million he has made and he has only donated 100K which he now states "offsets the books royalties".... how is that?? That is less than 4% to the CAI. He hasn't even used any of that money to repay the 4.6 million of the CAI monies he used for his personal travel etc to endorse those two books.


Let's see what the IRS says when they come a knocking this week and audit his ass after seeing this report.

twoshuzz, as usual, makes many of the points I wanted to, although I have to say that I am more skeptical than he is of Mortenson and CAI's explanations.

First, I see Krakauer's accusations as tangential, so I don't really care about his credibility. He doesn't seem to be the main source for any of the substantive accusations, at least not the ones I genuinely care about. It's funny, but not unexpected, that a lot of the debate here has centered on him, given he's a climber.

Second, I'm also not surprised that 60 Minutes or whoever could find people that are disgruntled in Af/Pak. I worked for an organization in a much less volatile part of the world than there, and there were people who didn't like our work. And you could probably find all sorts of old projects we had done that were collapsing or being misused.

The bottom line for me is this, though: if the schools were built, it should be easy enough to actually verify. CAI has been called out publicly, so it would make sense for them to take an independent auditor to Af/Pak and demonstrate that the schools were built, built by them, etc. It would also make sense to genuinely open their books and ask for someone to compare them to comparable charitable organizations and assess where they fit in.

A rigorous assessment of their work itself would go a long way to resolving their issues. I don't buy their explanation that they are unaware of any organizations qualified to undertake an impact assessment of their work--and to be honest, I find it pretty arrogant that they believe no one is capable of doing so. They have the money and the connections to get that done. I know of a couple of organizations and several individuals off the top of my head qualified enough to put together an independent impact evaluation in that region, and many of them would be willing to donate their time to make it happen. So if CAI is interested in absolving themselves of any suspicion, there is a fairly simple first step to make that happen.

60 Mins has also gotten it right more than they have wrong in the past. They broke the story on these dudes that many at the time cried the same as you do Twoshuzz.... We now the know "The Rest of the Story!"








Like I said, let's wait and see what the IRS does after tonight.

jspeigl wrote:Mortenson and the CAI have done an incredible in Pakistan and Afghanistan. No one can take that away from him.

Hearsay evidence to drag down the character of Mortenson, that is the real bull shit!

Do you know Mortenson personally, enough to judge his character?

His work, his writings, his goals, his family, the people he has surrounded himself with, are all easily known and good indicators of a genuinely good person, I am sure that everyone here will withstand such scrutiny just as well!

T Sharp wrote:His work, his writings, his goals, his family, the people he has surrounded himself with, are all easily known and good indicators of a genuinely good person, I am sure that everyone here will withstand such scrutiny just as well!

Ah, that is exactly what many thousands said about this dude....

The Chief wrote:60 Mins also broke the story on these dudes that many at the time cried the same as you do Twoshuzz.... We now the know "The Rest of the Story!"








Like I said, let's wait and see what the IRS does after tonight.

60 minutes is gotcha journalism at its worst, and didn`t the National Enquirer break those stories! And by the way, they have the fact checkers that will get the real story!

Cmon Chief, what is all of this comparison shit? Your case is melting down!

The Chief wrote:

T Sharp wrote:His work, his writings, his goals, his family, the people he has surrounded himself with, are all easily known and good indicators of a genuinely good person, I am sure that everyone here will withstand such scrutiny just as well!

Ah, that is exactly what many thousands said about this dude....

A fine philanthropic example this one, Cripes.

Talk to me about Liddy Dole at the Red Cross!

T Sharp wrote:Your case is melting down!

My case? Funny!

Mort is a scammer. His case is the one that is melting fast.

Bottomline, if he has done nothing wrong, is a stand up guy, has nothing to hide, he should have granted 60 Minutes the interview and said his peace. Not had security escort Croft outta the hotel than high tailed his ass out the back door not to be seen in public since.

Mark my words, he is going to be outed and is going down!!!!!!


BTW, Conseco's book broke the story about all them B-Ball juicers and it was first aired on 60 minutes. I remember watching it.

Oh yeah, "Philanthropy" has the biggest amount of scam jobs known to the scamming gig. Fact


Liddy Dole = politician. Easy, she is a scammer and crook as well.

T Sharp wrote:

jspeigl wrote:Mortenson and the CAI have done an incredible in Pakistan and Afghanistan. No one can take that away from him.

Hearsay evidence to drag down the character of Mortenson, that is the real bull shit!

Do you know Mortenson personally, enough to judge his character?

His work, his writings, his goals, his family, the people he has surrounded himself with, are all easily known and good indicators of a genuinely good person, I am sure that everyone here will withstand such scrutiny just as well!

All this is from his books, written by him and his ghost writer.