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Sunday, Nov 22, 2009
The whole thing made my boss, John Kennedy, queasy. When he read the Jordan piece, he pressed me about whether the ribald details were really true. I assured him that they must be; Steve Glass was a good reporter. So, against his better judgment, John signed off on the piece.
Steve, meanwhile, was getting more and more buzz, writing more and more freelance pieces. Rolling Stone wanted him; so did GQ; even the prestigious New York Times Magazine was signing him up. How did he do it? I once asked Steve. How did he find the time to do all this reporting and writing and go to Georgetown Law School at night?
His answer explained everything. He had insomnia, he told me. He only needed three, maybe four hours of sleep a night. From midnight to 4 a.m., while his girlfriend slept, Steve would write. It was the perfect time. No one to bother you. He could really get a lot done. I wish I had insomnia like that, I thought. Think of how productive I could be!
Steve's third story for George was a profile of conservative editor and writer John Podhoretz, who was reputed to be a crotchety boss. Glass confirmed it; he unearthed a group of ex-Podhoretz wage slaves who convened at a D.C. bar every week to swap horror stories about their despised former overseer. Their yarns were pretty juicy. Podhoretz, I thought, must be a real jerk.
The story was a little rough, though. Steve would have to do another draft. But that was never a problem; Steve was a delight to edit. I'd call him about a manuscript, and as soon as I said hello he'd blurt, "You hate it, don't you? It's terrible, I know. I'm so sorry. I know. It's awful. Just kill it. Really. I won't mind."
He was disarming, like a little kid who's pissed off at himself; you couldn't help reaching out, reassuring him that everything would be OK. "Steve, it's great," I'd say. "It just needs a little tweaking."
"You really like it?" he would ask, his voice brightening. "Really?"
I would chuckle gently and feel quite the sage -- which, of course, Steve had surely discerned was exactly what I wanted to feel like. He had a way of making you feel good about yourself. That was one reason why everybody liked Steve Glass. And he told you what you wanted to hear. Steve knew that I was irritated by a steady stream of catty items the New Republic had run about George, and so he fed me a steady stream of bilious gossip about TNR. This editor was a pompous bore; no one took that writer seriously. I felt dirty for enjoying the gossip, but I never asked him to stop dishing it.
Before I could reach Steve to discuss the Podhoretz piece, we all found out how he had been getting such great stuff. He was making it up. A Forbes.com journalist named Adam Penenberg tried to follow up on a Glass story in the New Republic, only to find that none of it was real. In short order, TNR editor Chuck Lane fired Glass, and subsequent investigations showed that Steve's fabrications went way back, numbering in the dozens. At George, the Jordan piece simply blew apart like a dandelion in a strong wind. The day the news broke, I did some hasty rechecking of facts. In Glass' notes, I found the names of his lawyer sources, the ones Glass had asked us not to call because they feared talking to anyone but him. A bewildered night operator at Vernon Jordan's law firm informed me that there were no lawyers there by that name. The Podhoretz profile was also bunk. We fired Glass, too.
Our head fact checker, a hardworking young man who took his job seriously, who needed his job -- the kind of guy working his way up the journalistic ladder whom Glass had nimbly leapfrogged over -- was distraught, terrified that he would get fired but even more devastated because to him, the idea of truth in reporting mattered, and Glass' conduct was something he simply could not fathom.
A day or so after losing his job, Glass returned to his parents' home outside Chicago and simply disappeared. I was among those frantically trying to find out what was going on -- the details were still murky -- and to ask which facts in our stories might be false. There were legal issues to consider, apologies to write; we needed his help. Only once did I get through. In a fragile, quavering voice, Steve hinted to me that his parents feared for his life. "Someone's with me all the time, I can't talk now," he said, and hung up.
I have never talked with him since.
