What’s the Trouble with the Truth?

2011 was a tough year for two giants in the world of outdoor sports and American charities.

Greg Mortenson, author of the bestselling books Three Cups of Tea and Stones Into Schools, and founder of the Central Asia Institute, has been long and widely criticized for loose accounting practices, often blurring the lines between his personal fortunes made for sales of the book and the everyday operating expenses of the charity he founded to build schools in Afghanistan and Pakistan. What’s more damming, to some, are more recent allegations that his inspirational story outlined in the books is riddled with distortions, exaggerations, and lies, and the many of the schools the CAI has built now stand empty. Mortenson’s fall from grace has been so far that he was recently included on the dubious CharityWatch Hall of Shame, with its parent organization (the American Institute of Philanthropy) calling for his resignation in December.

Much of the evidence for Mortenson’s ignominy was outlined by a scathing piece on 60 Minutes last summer. And a report by fellow writer and climber Jon Krakauer. And Outside Magazine. In follow-up interviews with many involved, and close examination of the times and locations of many of Mortenson’s tales, they conclude things could not possibly have played out as presented.

Meanwhile, 7-time Tour de France winner Lance Armstrong has had his name surface in multiple investigations of the rampant use of performance enhancing drugs in professional cycling, the most damming of those coming from his former teammate Tyler Hamilton. This also was the subject of a scathing 60 Minutes story (ironically within a week of when the Mortenson story aired). And a Sports Illustrated expose. And Men’s Journal. But the only one that matters is the federal investigation being led by Jeff Novitzky, who could bring indictments against Armstrong in 2012.

As with Mortenson, Armstrong’s claims ring false. When hearing the accounts of so many people who were so close to Armstrong for so many years, that seemingly everybody in the sport of cycling was doping, including much of his own team, you have to wonder how it was possible that the dominant rider for more than a decade not only didn’t dope, but claims to not know about anyone else doping either. Really?

I’ve had a tough time reconciling my opinions of these two. On the one hand, they have both unquestionably done amazing things that have helps thousands – if not millions – of people less fortunate. On the other hand, you can’t listen to what they say and not sense that their credibility has been stretched well past the breaking point.

Many people will say their stories don’t matter, that the good these two men are doing borders on heroic, and that deceit in the past is of little relevance to their work today. I guess for me, while I can appreciate and admire the giant feats they’ve accomplished (schools in the far corners of the Earth; beating cancer and dominating a sport), I desire something a lot easier in my heroes. I simply want them to tell the truth.