Stephen Glass

Based on Wikipedia: Stephen Glass

In May 1998, a reporter at Forbes magazine tried to verify a story about a teenage hacker. The story had appeared in The New Republic, one of America's most respected political magazines, and it was delicious: a pimply fifteen-year-old named Ian Restil had broken into a California software company's computer systems, and instead of prosecuting him, they'd hired him as a security consultant. The kid was demanding a Mazda Miata, trips to Disney World, and a lifetime subscription to Playboy.

There was just one problem. None of it was true.

The company didn't exist. The hacker didn't exist. The hacker conference where they supposedly met didn't exist. The whole thing had sprung fully formed from the imagination of Stephen Glass, a twenty-five-year-old staff writer who had been fabricating stories for years—and who had gone to extraordinary lengths to ensure no one would ever find out.

The Making of a Fabulist

Stephen Randall Glass grew up in Highland Park, Illinois, a prosperous suburb north of Chicago. He attended the University of Pennsylvania, where he became an executive editor of The Daily Pennsylvanian, the student newspaper. Even then, there were hints of what was to come—one of his articles from that period, "A Day on the Streets," would later fall under suspicion of fabrication.

After graduation, Glass worked briefly for Policy Review, a conservative publication, before landing at The New Republic in 1995 as an editorial assistant. He was twenty-three years old, ambitious, and possessed of a talent that would prove to be both his greatest asset and his undoing: he could tell stories that people desperately wanted to believe.

Within months, he'd advanced from assistant to feature writer. His pieces were vivid, funny, and packed with the kind of colorful details that make magazine journalism sing. He wrote about hackers and political conferences, about drug education programs and software executives. His sources said outrageous things on the record. His scenes unfolded with cinematic clarity.

The stories were also, to a remarkable degree, made up.

The Architecture of Deception

What set Glass apart from ordinary fabricators was the sheer elaborateness of his deceptions. Most people who make things up get caught because they're lazy—they don't bother to construct the infrastructure needed to support their lies. Glass was not lazy. He was, in his own twisted way, a perfectionist.

For the "Hack Heaven" story about the teenage hacker, Glass created an entire fictional ecosystem. He built a website for Jukt Micronics, the software company that supposedly hired Ian Restil. He set up a voicemail system so that fact-checkers calling to verify the story would reach "company representatives"—actually his brother, playing a role. He fabricated handwritten notes from his interviews. He had fake business cards printed. He even created a fictional newsletter for a fictional hacker community.

This wasn't a single lie. It was a conspiracy of one, meticulously maintained.

The New Republic, like most magazines, employed fact-checkers. Their job was to verify that the claims in each article were accurate. But fact-checking relies on a fundamental assumption: that the reporter is trying to tell the truth, and the checker's job is merely to catch honest mistakes. Glass had figured out how to game this system. If a fact-checker called a number to verify a source, they'd reach someone Glass had prepared to confirm the story. If they asked to see his notes, he'd produce convincing forgeries.

The fact-checkers weren't incompetent. They were simply operating in a world where Glass's level of deception was considered unthinkable.

Warning Signs Ignored

In retrospect, there were red flags everywhere. Glass's stories relied heavily on anonymous sources and partially identified informants—people who couldn't be contacted to confirm what they'd said. When his subjects did complain, The New Republic usually defended Glass.

In December 1996, the Center for Science in the Public Interest, a nonprofit consumer advocacy group, was the target of a hostile Glass article titled "Hazardous to Your Mental Health." The organization issued a press release documenting numerous inaccuracies and hinting at plagiarism. Michael Kelly, then the editor of The New Republic, demanded that the Center apologize to Glass.

In March 1997, the Drug Abuse Resistance Education program—better known as D.A.R.E.—accused Glass of fabrications in an article titled "Don't You D.A.R.E." Two months later, officials at the College Republican National Committee made similar accusations about a lurid tale of drinking and debauchery at a conservative conference. In June, Hofstra University wrote to the magazine reciting errors in Glass's coverage of a conference they'd hosted.

Each time, the accusations were dismissed or minimized.

But not everyone was fooled. Martin Peretz, The New Republic's editor-in-chief and majority owner, later revealed that his wife had stopped reading Glass's stories altogether. She simply didn't find them credible. It's a telling detail: sometimes the people closest to a fraud are the last to see it clearly, while outsiders spot it immediately.

The Unraveling

The beginning of the end came from an unlikely source: competitive pride.

Adam Penenberg was a reporter at Forbes Digital, the online arm of Forbes magazine. When "Hack Heaven" appeared in The New Republic, Penenberg was annoyed. How had a political magazine scooped Forbes on a technology story? He decided to follow up, to see if there was more to report.

He started searching for Jukt Micronics. Nothing came up. He contacted the California Franchise Tax Board. No company by that name had ever paid taxes in the state. He looked for the "National Assembly of Hackers," which had supposedly sponsored the conference where the teenage hacker was discovered. No hacker he could find had ever heard of it.

Penenberg tried to verify Glass's claim that twenty-one states were considering something called the "Uniform Computer Security Act." He called law enforcement officials and the National Conference of Commissioners on Uniform State Laws. No one knew anything about any such legislation.

On Friday, May 8, 1998, Forbes presented its findings to Charles Lane, who had recently become the editor of The New Republic. Lane had inherited Glass from his predecessor and had no reason to suspect him. Now he was being told that an entire story might be invented.

The Hotel That Wasn't

Lane decided to investigate personally. He had Glass take him to the Hyatt Regency Hotel in Bethesda, Maryland, where the fictional hacker conference had supposedly taken place. What he found was damning.

The hotel's layout didn't match Glass's description. The building where the conference supposedly occurred hadn't even been open for business on the day in question. The restaurant where the hackers had allegedly gathered for a banquet closed in the mid-afternoon—it couldn't have hosted an evening event.

Then came the phone call. Glass provided Lane with a phone number for a Jukt Micronics executive. Lane dialed it and spoke with a man who identified himself as a company representative. But something was off. Lane realized he was speaking to Glass's brother.

Glass was fired on the spot.

The Full Extent

What followed was an agonizing inventory. The New Republic went back through every story Glass had ever written for the magazine and examined each one for fabrications. The results were devastating.

Of the forty-one articles Glass had written for The New Republic, at least twenty-seven contained fabricated material. Some mixed real reporting with invented quotes and incidents. Others, like "Hack Heaven," were complete fictions from start to finish.

Charles Lane later suggested that the actual number was probably higher. "I'd bet lots of the stuff in those other fourteen is fake too," he said in an interview. "It's not like we're vouching for those fourteen, that they're true. They're probably not either."

Other publications began their own investigations. Rolling Stone and Harper's re-examined Glass's contributions and found them "generally accurate"—but acknowledged they had no way to truly verify the information because Glass had relied so heavily on anonymous sources. George magazine discovered fabrications in at least three of his stories. Glass had even fabricated quotes in a profile of Vernon Jordan, an adviser to President Bill Clinton, and later apologized to Jordan directly.

The final count, established during Glass's later attempt to become a lawyer, was staggering: thirty-six fabricated stories at The New Republic, three at George, two at Rolling Stone, and one at Policy Review.

And then there was Harper's. In 2015, Glass sent the magazine a check for ten thousand dollars—the payment he'd received for his fabricated article—along with a letter admitting the deception. Harper's retracted the story. It was the first retraction in the magazine's 165-year history.

Even His Confessions Were Incomplete

Glass had also contributed to This American Life, the public radio program known for its intimate, first-person storytelling. He'd told two stories: one about an internship at George Washington's former plantation, another about his time working as a telephone psychic. Both segments were eventually removed from the program's archives "because of questions about their truthfulness."

This pattern—of deceptions that kept revealing themselves years after the initial exposure—would define Glass's legacy. Every time the full scope of his fabrications seemed to be established, more would surface.

The Psychology of Betrayal

What makes the Stephen Glass story so compelling isn't just the scale of his fabrications. It's the way he manipulated the people around him.

Glass was, by all accounts, extremely likeable. His colleagues at The New Republic remembered him as warm, attentive, and genuinely interested in their lives. He asked about their families, their relationships, their struggles at work. He seemed to care.

Charles Lane, the editor who ultimately fired him, offered a devastating assessment:

We extended normal human trust to someone who basically lacked a conscience. We busy, friendly folks were no match for such a willful deceiver. We thought Glass was interested in our personal lives, or our struggles with work, and we thought it was because he cared. Actually, it was all about sizing us up and searching for vulnerabilities. What we saw as concern was actually contempt.

This is perhaps the most chilling aspect of Glass's deception. It wasn't just professional—it was personal. He studied his colleagues the way a predator studies prey, learning their weaknesses so he could exploit them more effectively.

The Fabulist and His Film

In 2003, Glass attempted something audacious: a comeback.

He published a novel called The Fabulist, a fictionalized account of his time at The New Republic. The book was timed to coincide with the release of Shattered Glass, a feature film about his scandal starring Hayden Christensen. Glass even sat for an interview with 60 Minutes to promote his book.

The response from his former colleagues was scathing. Leon Wieseltier, The New Republic's literary editor, didn't hold back: "The creep is doing it again. Even when it comes to reckoning with his own sins, he is still incapable of nonfiction. The careerism of his repentance is repulsively consistent with the careerism of his crimes."

Andrew Sullivan, the editor who had originally hired Glass at The New Republic, participated in a panel discussion with him at George Washington University. Sullivan called Glass a "serial liar" who was using "contrition as a career move."

And yet some reviewers saw genuine talent beneath the deception. One noted, with obvious irony, that "Mr. Glass is abundantly talented. He's funny and fluent and daring. In a parallel universe, I could imagine him becoming a perfectly respectable novelist."

That parallel universe, of course, would have required Glass to distinguish between fiction and journalism—a distinction he had spectacularly failed to make when it mattered.

The Quest for a Law License

After his journalism career imploded, Glass pursued law. He graduated magna cum laude from Georgetown University Law Center in 2000 and was even named a John M. Olin Fellow in law and economics—a prestigious honor. He passed the New York State bar exam that same year.

But passing the exam is only part of becoming a lawyer. Every state also requires applicants to pass a "moral fitness" test—essentially, a determination that the person is ethical enough to be trusted with clients' interests. Glass's history of fabrication made this a significant hurdle.

The New York bar refused to certify him. He eventually abandoned his efforts there.

He moved to California and found work at a personal injury law firm called Carpenter & Zuckerman in West Hollywood. He wasn't a lawyer—he couldn't be, without bar admission—but he worked as a paralegal and later became director of special projects. A senior partner at the firm told him something unexpectedly kind when he was hired: "Being exposed as a serial fabricator is the best thing that ever happened to you. Now that you've fallen on your face, you can actually be a useful human being."

Glass passed the California bar exam in 2006 or 2007 and applied for admission in 2009. Once again, he was rejected on moral fitness grounds. He petitioned for review, and a hearing department found that he'd reformed—that he possessed the "good moral character" required for admission.

The Committee of Bar Examiners disagreed and took the case to the California Supreme Court. It was the first time in eleven years that the court had agreed to review a moral character case.

The Court's Verdict

Glass's lawyers argued that his behavior had been "beyond reproach" for more than thirteen years. They presented evidence of his work at the law firm, his community involvement, his apparent transformation. They asked the court to believe that people can change.

On January 27, 2014, the California Supreme Court ruled unanimously against him.

The opinion was lengthy and detailed, and it painted a damning portrait. The court didn't just look at Glass's original fabrications—it examined his conduct in the years since. What they found was troubling: "instances of dishonesty and disingenuousness persisting throughout that period."

The court was particularly disturbed by what it called "hypocrisy and evasiveness" in Glass's testimony at his 2010 hearing. He hadn't fully admitted the extent of his fabrications until the California bar proceedings in 2007—nearly a decade after he was fired. Even his attempts at redemption seemed incomplete, hedged, calculated.

Glass would never become a licensed attorney in California.

Restitution

In the years following his exposure, Glass attempted to make financial amends. He claims to have repaid approximately two hundred thousand dollars to The New Republic, Rolling Stone, Harper's, and Policy Review—the publications he had deceived.

The Harper's payment came with a letter in which Glass acknowledged that repaying the money "will not remedy my wrongdoing, make us even, or undo what I did wrong." But, he wrote, "I did not deserve the money that Harper's paid me and it should be returned."

Whether money can ever truly compensate for this kind of breach is an open question. Glass didn't just take payment for fabricated work—he damaged the credibility of every publication he wrote for, and by extension, the credibility of journalism itself.

The Personal Cost

In 1998, amid his legal troubles, Glass met a lawyer named Julie Hilden. They began dating in 2000 and married in 2014—the same year the California Supreme Court rejected his bar application. The timing of their marriage was not coincidental: Hilden had been diagnosed with early-onset Alzheimer's disease.

Glass devoted himself to her care. He hired a housekeeper and aides to stay with her while he was at work. He tended to her at their home in Venice, a beachside neighborhood of Los Angeles.

Julie Hilden died in 2018.

The Larger Questions

The Stephen Glass scandal arrived at a particular moment in American journalism. The late 1990s were a time of transition—print publications were beginning to grapple with the internet, but the old prestige hierarchies were still intact. The New Republic was a magazine that mattered, a place where ideas were debated and reputations were made.

Glass's fabrications exposed vulnerabilities in that system. Fact-checking, it turned out, was only as good as the assumptions underlying it. If a reporter was willing to construct an elaborate architecture of lies—fake companies, fake phone numbers, fake newsletters—the traditional safeguards would fail.

The scandal also raised uncomfortable questions about what readers want from journalism. Glass's stories were popular precisely because they were so vivid, so entertaining, so perfectly crafted. They confirmed preexisting beliefs about hackers, about conservatives, about various targets of satire. Perhaps readers should have been more skeptical. Perhaps editors should have questioned why Glass's sources always said such quotable things.

In 2003, just months after the Shattered Glass film was released, The New York Times was rocked by its own fabrication scandal when reporter Jayson Blair was exposed. The parallels were obvious enough that prominent journalists like Frank Rich and Mark Bowden used the Glass case as a lens for understanding the Blair case. Fabrication, it seemed, was not an isolated failure but a systemic risk.

What Remains

Today, many of Glass's articles for The New Republic are no longer available online. The magazine has, in effect, tried to erase him from its archives. But the scandal itself endures—as a cautionary tale, as a case study in media ethics classes, as the subject of a well-regarded film.

Stephen Glass is now in his early fifties. He still works at the law firm where he landed after his journalism career ended, doing whatever work a brilliant person who cannot practice law can find. He never got the redemption he sought—never became a lawyer, never fully rehabilitated his reputation.

Perhaps that's as it should be. Some violations of trust are so fundamental that they cannot be fully repaired. Glass didn't just make mistakes; he constructed an elaborate system of deception designed to exploit the good faith of everyone around him. His colleagues trusted him, and he used that trust against them.

Charles Lane's words remain the most haunting epitaph for Glass's journalism career: "What we saw as concern was actually contempt."

In the end, that contempt was the only thing that was real.