"Three Cups of Tea" and one big question: Do author's fabrications undo his good deeds?

Feeling a bit betrayed by what now appears to be a web of lies that formed the basis of Greg Mortensen's inspiring "Three Cups of Tea" and the massive charity that grew from it?

Join the club.

In 2001, long before Mortenson's story became a perennial best-seller, he sold it to me before a Seattle fundraising appearance. Boy, did I buy it.

It was the same inspired tale that opens "Three Cups of Tea." The climber, weak and ill after failing in an attempt to climb the mountain K2 in honor of his late sister, stumbled into the Pakistani village of Korphe in 1993. Touched by his generous treatment, he vowed to return and build a school.

Mortenson seemed like the rare climber with as much selflessness as oxygen capacity. I was impressed.

"Most people who visit K2 bring home a prayer flag, a piece of stone, some natural memento of doing battle with the world's most harrowing mountain," I wrote. "Greg Mortenson brought home a conscience."

Perhaps he has misplaced it somewhere along the way.

In any case, I am comforted — a little — by not feeling alone in the long line of those sucked in by his charisma.

Lots of people — journalists, donors, volunteers, schoolchildren — who had hitched their hearts to Mortenson's laudable mission to build schools in rural Pakistan and Afghanistan are asking hard questions this week, after "60 Minutes" reported that Mortenson likely fabricated key parts of "Three Cups of Tea," and may have misused millions in charity money for his own purposes.

Chief among those questions: Does fudging a few facts here and there really need to undo all the good this man has done?

Alas, even that question appears based on a false premise. Far more than "a few facts" are in question. Any doubters should set aside an hour or two and take in "Three Cups of Deceit," an exhaustively researched online broadside published by author and former Seattleite Jon Krakauer.

Krakauer was one of Mortenson's earliest supporters, calling his Central Asia Institute's school-building work "miraculous" when Krakauer introduced the Bozeman, Mont., man at a 2001 Seattle fundraiser. Over time, Krakauer says, he donated $75,000.

The charity, largely due to the success of "Three Cups," has raised as much as $20 million a year. But in 2004, after hearing rumors of malfeasance, Krakauer cut off his financial support and started asking hard questions.

Many linger in his 75-page exposé, which is nothing less than a stem-to-stern gutting of the Mortenson persona — far more damning than the duplicity highlight reel shown by "60 Minutes." Some of the most disturbing details of Mortenson's falsehoods and spending activities, it turns out, didn't even make it into the CBS report.

"Mortenson's books and public statements are permeated with falsehoods," Krakauer writes in an opening salvo, blaming Mortenson's "apparently insatiable hunger for esteem."

Krakauer goes so far as to compare Mortenson's book with the work of the poster boy for modern fabrication, "A Million Little Pieces" author James Frey, suggesting Mortenson's offenses are far more damaging because he used his lies to solicit tens of millions of dollars from unsuspecting donors.

That's just the warm-up. Among Krakauer's many other charges:

• As CBS reported, Mortenson appears to use millions in contributions to the Central Asia Institute (CAI) to advertise his books and cover expenses for what essentially is a permanent speaking tour. Both enrich Mortenson, not the charity. A private January memo from a tax attorney to the CAI board, quoted by Krakauer, says Mortenson might have to repay his charity as much as $7.3 million to avoid breaking tax laws for the years 2007-09, and could face a "total liability" of up to $23.6 million.

• Even the book's seemingly miraculous run atop best-seller lists might be squishy. The charity routinely purchases large quantities of the book to be given away at speaking engagements, Krakauer writes. They're purchased at full retail through traditional booksellers, rather than wholesale from the publisher, thus ensuring a royalty cut for Mortenson — and a fake boost in sales figures.

Northwesterners — particularly those in the climbing world — were among Mortenson's biggest supporters, and crucial to getting his charity off the ground.

Famed Everest climber Tom Hornbein was an early chairman of the CAI board, giving Mortenson instant credibility in many circles. Hornbein resigned in 2002 after failed attempts to rein in Mortenson's questionable business practices, Krakauer reveals.

And Seattle's Jean Hoerni, a Swiss-born physicist who pioneered modern microchip technology in the Silicon Valley, was Mortenson's first benefactor, donating $1 million before dying in 1997.

These were good deeds by good people. Many, many have followed as the CAI has grown.

Some of Mortenson's devoted supporters — there are many who described reading his book as a religious experience — surely will ask what they likely consider a rhetorical question: In light of the good that Mortenson has done, do these little details really matter?

Damn right they do.

Mortenson's "nonfiction" tale, used to solicit tax-free millions from donors who include penny-saving children, is repeated as gospel before sellout crowds across America. The Korphe experience is the heart of his story.

Korphe injects the element of fate into the plotline — as if some unseen hand guided this purposeless drifter, his spirit flagging, to that time and place, and made Mortenson its messenger moving forward. It also created a sense of Mortenson "giving back" to repay the selflessness of Pakistani villagers.

But Krakauer writes that, when Mortenson claimed he was forming a spiritual bond with children in Korphe, he likely was chilling in a comfy motel elsewhere in Pakistan. He did travel to Korphe and begin charity work a year later, reneging on a promise he had made to build a school in another village.

Without the Korphe epiphany, most of the magic in "Three Cups" goes poof.

Mortenson now admits the timing of events in the book was "compressed," and indirectly blames his co-author, David Relin, for mixing things up while he was tied up working 20-hour days to save the world.

"In order to be convenient, there were some omissions," Mortenson told Outside magazine.

He now says he truly did visit Korphe that fateful 1993 day, but through an increasingly foggy memory (odd, for such a life-altering event), believes he spent only a few hours there — not days, as the book implies.

He's calling it literary license. That's a clever euphemism for not real.

I can't help but notice that the version of the Korphe tale told in "Three Cups" is the exact same one Mortenson told me in 2001, while his memory was presumably fresher, and long before any co-writer came along to screw it all up.

That may be the least of his concerns. Montana's attorney general on Tuesday announced an investigation of the charity. The Internal Revenue Service is likely next.

The real question for all those who still believe in Mortenson's cause, even if the man himself is rendered unbelievable, is what happens to the charity.

Krakauer, who concedes Mortenson has been a "tireless advocate" for girls' education, said he believes the institute can be saved — if it makes an immediate and irrevocable break from its tarnished leader.

The problem is that Mortenson, after weeding out all who questioned his management, is its sole controller.

He emphatically told Outside that the charity, the book and he "are pretty much all part of each other."

That leads even some of his most passionate early supporters to question whether Mortenson already has taken his cause down with him.

"I feel as if I was stupidly conned," Hornbein wrote recently to Krakauer, summing up the feelings of many jilted believers in Mortenson's cause.

"With one hand Greg has created something potentially beautiful and caring (regardless of his motives). With the other he has murdered his creation by his duplicity."

Ron Judd, a fifth-generation Washingtonian, scours the Northwest in search of people, places, traditions and endangered icons. Reach him at rjudd@seattletimes.com or 206-464-8280.