On Sunday, the investigative television program 60 Minutes (watch here) accused Greg Mortenson, climber, author and co-founder of the Central Asia Institute (CAI), a non-profit that has since 1996 built 170 schools in remote regions of Pakistan and Afghanistan, of fabricating stories and using CAI funding for personal gain.

One of the more damaging claims refutes Mortenson’s story that was his impetus for the founding of the CAI, and has been an inspiration for people who have donated to the nonprofit.

Mortenson, in his New York Times bestselling Three Cups of Tea, writes of his failed attempt on K2 in 1993 and that he became sick and lost during the hike out from the mountain, eventually stumbling into the village of Korphe, where he was nursed back to health. While in Korphe, Mortenson saw children doing their homework by scratching in the dirt with sticks, and he vowed to return and build a school, which he eventually did.

In the televised report, Steve Kroft interviews Jon Krakauer, author of Into Thin Air, who says that Mortenson’s Korphe story is “beautiful” but that “it's a lie." Krakauer, who wrote a lengthy piece, "Three Cups of Deceit," for byliner.com, says he spoke with one of Mortenson’s climbing companions who was on the K2 trip. According to Krakauer, Mortenson’s partner says that Mortenson hiked out with him and did not go to Korphe until a year later. See the interview on Outside Online where Mortenson identifies his K2 companion as Scott Darsney.

In Outside Online, Mortenson says that he compressed time for the book, including the Korphe story, blending several trips into one. He says that he did indeed stumble, sick and weak, into Korphe during the K2 retreat, but only stayed a few hours, and that the decision to build the school happened a year later in Korphe, in 1994. Mortenson says that Three Cups of Tea was his first experience with writing non-fiction, that he was naive about the process, and went along with his book co-author David Oliver Relin to simplify a complicated story. Relin was not interviewed or quoted during the 60 Minutes episode.

60 Minutes also claimed that Mortenson wasn’t kidnapped for eight days by the Taliban in 1996, as he wrote in Three Cups of Tea and his second book, Stones Into Schools. In the latter book, Mortenson is shown in a photograph surrounded by 13 armed tribesman he says were his Taliban kidnappers. To support its version, 60 Minutes produced Mansur Khan Mahsud, a research coordinator for the FATA Research Center, an Islamabad-based think tank. Mahsud identified himself as one of the men in Mortenson’s photo, but said he was there as a “protector,” not kidnapper. Mortenson stands by his account, saying he was indeed held for days against his will, but is unsure if his kidnappers were Taliban.

Most damaging,  60 Minutes reported that the CAI spent only 41 percent of its money in 2009 building schools, with $1.7 million going to advertising and Mortenson’s 2009 book-signing tour and speaking engagements where he was sometimes paid a $30,000 honorarium. In a somewhat confusing response posted online here, the three-person CAI board of directors—of which Mortenson is a member—notes that Mortenson’s books and engagements inspired people to donate,  and that the donations “far exceed CAI’s book-related expenditures.” The board also says that much of the money was held in reserve for future use and that Mortenson “has personally donated hundreds of thousands of dollars to the organization, which includes a percentage of his royalties from his books, and worked for the organization without compensation for a number of years.” (Disclosure: Mortenson and the CAI have advertised in Rock and Ice.)

If you take 60 Minutes as unbiased fact, don't mind that 60 Minutes didn't interview a single person who would support or vouch for Mortenson,  and believe Mansur Khan Mahsud and others' versions of events—Mortenson has long been unpopular among people who would rather not see the schools built—then it looks bleak for Mortenson and the CAI. Indeed, minutes after the 60 Minutes program aired the internet was flooded with critical articles, blogs and Tweets.

It is plausible that if Mortenson is guilty it is of being swept up in a snowball of unanticipated success, one where he found himself at the head of a large organization with a system of inadequate oversight and counsel.

What isn’t contested is that Mortenson often put himself at great physical risk and endured years of hardship to sow the seeds of peace through education in a region of the world that desperately needs it. Mortenson has bettered the lives of thousands of children. I can’t think of a single climber who has made such a positive contribution to humanity.

Rock and Ice has long been a supporter of Mortenson and favorably reported on him twice in recent memory, including a 2007 piece by Mark Jenkins, who visited a school that Mortenson, that the CAI and the AAC had built, in Pakrat, Pakistan, a village devastated by a 7.6 magnitude earthquake. Jenkins reported seeing “50 wildly happy children,” in a new, warm and watertight school.

Jenkins' experience isn't an isolated incident, and numerous CAI supporters have witness firsthand the benefits the group has provided, and have been impressed by Mortenson himself. In 1999, Brady Robinson, Executive Director of the Access Fund, visited, with Jimmy Chin, the CAI school in Hushe in Pakistan. "We spent the day with the children," says Robinson. " The teachers seemed eager to expose them to two native English speakers."

Several days later, much to Brady's surprise, "Greg Mortenson walked into our basecamp in the Charakusa Valley with a goat as a token of his appreciation for our support of his school. I was struck by his gentle demeanor. He exuded compassion and inner peace, much like a Buddhist monk. He also struck me as someone who was moved by whimsy, a happy victim of circumstance and his own good nature. Why would he walk all the way into the Charkusa to give a couple of American boys a goat?

"I returned to Hushe again in 2001," says Robinson, "and spent some time with all the little boys and girls. I have personally witnessed some of the good that came of his vision and hard work."

Over the past 10 years, I have spoken to Mortenson on the phone and he has come here to Carbondale, Colorado, and spoken at the local schools free of charge. Despite this, I’ve yet to meet him in person. During one of our infrequent conversations a few years back, we were talking about our families and I mentioned that my wife and I have two Asian daughters. I forgot the name of his little girl almost as soon as I hung up, but that Christmas each of my daughters received a note and a small gift, a hand-woven icon from Mortenson. If his is the face of corruption, the rest of us are definitely going straight to hell.

That is the sentiment I'd like to have (and had until I read Krakauer's article), understanding that not even the angels are angels, and that for the accusations against Mortenson to be true, he would have had to dupe the presidents of two countries, the Pentagon, the Senate, the Nobel committee, tens of thousands of Americans, adults and children, and virtually every news outlet, this one included. Illogical to believe, but if 60 Minutes cast a long shadow of doubt over the operations of the CAI, Krakauer's Three Cups of Deceit plunges it into a lunar eclipse, with accusations of wholesale manufacturing of expense receipts to pass an audit, knowingly building schools that have no hope of ever having students, having the CAI buy mass quantities of Three Cups of Tea at full retail from bookstores so Mortenson can get his royalties and keep his book-number ranked as a number-one bestseller, and a lot more. Most of the claims are substantiated and the article is chocked with quotes from reliable sources that paint a disturbing picture.

I'd rather not believe the accusations and I'm not the only one. "I have donated to his cause and have convinced others to do so. Unfortunately, many of the allegations against Greg seem credible. I’m devastated,” says Brady Robinson.

One allegation noted by Krakauer is too concrete and too easy to check for yourself to brush aside. Krakauer notes that Three Cups of Tea describes Mortenson as being in Calcutta in 2000 and paying his respects to Mother Teresa, who had just died. Mortenson, viewing her body,  "could see where the cream-colored muslin had been discolored from the laying on of hundreds of hands." Mortenson "didn't feel right to touch her feet." Instead he "placed his large palm over her small hand."

Back in Montana, "during the winter of 2000, Mortenson often reflected on those few rare moments with Mother Teresa."

Plausible and moving, except for the fact that Mother Teresa died in 1997—the tale as told in Three Cups of Tea could not have happened, nor, since it is an intricately woven tale that moves the book forward can it be explained away as a lapse in memory or sloppy writing or an error in fact checking.

We will learn a lot more in the coming weeks. Viking, the publisher of Three Cups of Tea, is investigating, and I doubt they are the only ones who will peel back the onion. Mortenson, after he recovers from heart surgery scheduled for this week, will come under, as Krakauer puts it, a bright light.