Three Cups of Deceit: How Greg Mortenson, Humanitarian Hero, Lost His Way Read Online Free PDF Page B

public presentations. But in truth, CAI was spending $50,000 or more — sometimes a lot more — just to build a single school, and the funds coming in were significantly less than the funds going out. Four years after Hoerni ’ s death, Mortenson had already burned through most of Hoerni ’ s money, and CAI teetered on the brink of insolvency.
    “ Greg had no sense of what it takes to run a business, ” says Jennifer Wilson, who joined CAI ’ s board of directors shortly after Hoerni passed away. “ Jean was able to make Greg do things and hold him accountable, but after Jean was gone, Greg wouldn ’ t answer to anyone … . Tom Vaughan was a sweetheart, but Greg could always find his way around him. ”
    Vaughan, a genial San Francisco pulmonologist and mountaineer who died in 2009, served as chairman of the CAI board. “ Even when he was home, we often wouldn ’ t hear from Greg for weeks, ” Vaughan laments in Three Cups, in one of the rare criticisms of Mortenson that appears in the book. “ And he wouldn ’ t return phone calls or emails. The board had a discussion about trying to make Greg account for how he spent his time, but we realized that would never work. Greg just does whatever he wants. ” Most of the directors, like Vaughan, were frustrated by Mortenson ’ s passive-aggressive disposition, and his disdain for routine business practices.
    In late 1999, with Mortenson ’ s encouragement, Tom Hornbein had been asked to join CAI ’ s board to boost fundraising and provide the organization with some badly needed discipline. Thirty-six years earlier, Hornbein had made the first ascent of the formidable West Ridge of Mount Everest, still widely considered one of the greatest accomplishments in mountaineering history. President John F. Kennedy awarded the Hubbard Medal to Hornbein and his Everest teammates (one of whom was Mortenson ’ s future father-in-law, Barry Bishop). In a distinguished career after Everest, Hornbein served as chairman of the anesthesiology department at the University of Washington School of Medicine, where he earned a reputation as a demanding but compassionate jefe .
    “ Tom Hornbein was really fun to work with, ” Jennifer Wilson remembers of their years together on the CAI board. “ He and I agreed on so many levels, especially about the need to hold Greg accountable and somehow get him to be more businesslike. ”
    But the harder Hornbein, Wilson, and other CAI directors tried to persuade Mortenson to heed their edicts about providing receipts, documenting expenses, and conforming to IRS regulations, the more intransigent he became. By 2001, when Hornbein succeeded Tom Vaughan as chairman of the CAI board, relations between Mortenson and the rest of the board were nearing the flash point. In an email to Mortenson dated September 20, 2001, Hornbein warned,
 
I write to share with you my continuing concerns about our relationship in our roles as Director and Board chair … . The underlying issues are ones of communication between the two of us, and trust … . Whatever the stigma, if you and I are not able to work out a more facile, productive communication, I doubt my ability to fulfill my responsibility to you and the CAI Board … . We exist, whether you consider us a pain-in-the-ass at times or not. Unless you would wish to and are capable of being a one man show (as it was in the beginning), then you are stuck with and need us.
     
    When he sent this email, Hornbein was feverishly organizing a major fundraiser for CAI, to be held twelve days hence at Seattle ’ s Town Hall, and he asked me to serve as Mortenson ’ s opening act. I ’ d met Greg four or five times by then, and I was enormously impressed by what he ’ d done in Pakistan. When Greg explained to me that it had all begun with a promise he ’ d made to the people of Korphe in 1993, after he ’ d accidentally wandered into their village and they ’ d nursed him back to health, I was profoundly