Although he earned a Juris Doctor from Georgetown University Law Center and passed the bar exam in New York and California, he was unable to become a licensed attorney in either state over concerns derived from his scandal.
[1] Glass instead found work as a paralegal at the law firm Carpenter, Zuckerman & Rowley, serving as the director of special projects and trial-team coordinator.
While employed full-time at TNR, he also wrote for other magazines including George, Rolling Stone, and Harper's;[9][10] he also contributed to Public Radio International's (PRI) This American Life.
[12] In December 1996, the Center for Science in the Public Interest (CSPI) was the target of a hostile article by Glass titled "Hazardous to Your Mental Health".
CSPI wrote a letter to the editor and issued a press release pointing out numerous inaccuracies and distortions and hinting at possible plagiarism.
[14] In May 1997, Joe Galli of the College Republican National Committee accused Glass of fabrications in "Spring Breakdown", his lurid tale of drinking and debauchery at the 1997 Conservative Political Action Conference.
[4] Still, the magazine's majority owner and editor-in-chief, Martin Peretz, later said that his wife had told him that she did not find Glass's stories credible and had stopped reading them.
The article opened as follows, Ian Restil, a 15-year-old computer hacker who looks like an even more adolescent version of Bill Gates, is throwing a tantrum.
[17] Penenberg also found that several other claims Glass made in the article appeared to be false: Glass claimed that law-enforcement officials in Nevada ran articles pleading with companies not to hire hackers, but Bob Harmon, Public Information Officer for the Nevada State Attorney General's Office, said no such ads ran.
", contained real reporting interwoven with fabricated quotations and incidents,[21] while others, including "Hack Heaven", were completely made up.
[8] In the process of creating the "Hack Heaven" article, Glass had gone to especially elaborate lengths to thwart the discovery of his deception by TNR's fact checkers: creating a website[22][17] and voice mail account for Jukt Micronics; fabricating notes of story gathering;[10] having fake business cards printed; and even composing editions of a fake computer hacker community newsletter.
[8] As for the balance of the 41 stories, Lane, in an interview given for the 2005 DVD edition of Shattered Glass, said, "In fact, I'd bet lots of the stuff in those other 14 is fake too.
Rolling Stone and Harper's found the material generally accurate yet maintained they had no way of verifying information because Glass had cited anonymous sources.
[23] Glass fabricated quotations in a profile piece and apologized to the article's subject, Vernon Jordan, an adviser to Bill Clinton when he was president.
[25][26] In 2003, Glass briefly returned to journalism, writing an article about Canadian marijuana laws for Rolling Stone.
Written and directed by Billy Ray, it stars Hayden Christensen as Glass, Peter Sarsgaard as Charles Lane, Hank Azaria as Michael Kelly and Steve Zahn as Adam Penenberg.
The film, appearing shortly after The New York Times suffered a similar plagiarism scandal with the discovery of Jayson Blair's fabrications, occasioned critiques of journalism by nationally prominent journalists such as Frank Rich and Mark Bowden.
[43] The Committee of Bar Examiners refused to certify him, finding that he did not satisfy California's moral fitness test because of his history of journalistic deception.
[36] On January 3, 2012, Glass's attorneys filed papers with the Court arguing that his behavior had been beyond reproach for more than 13 years and this was proof that he had reformed.
[44] On November 6, 2013, the California Supreme Court heard arguments in Glass's case[45] and ruled unanimously against him in an opinion issued January 27, 2014.
The lengthy opinion describes the applicant's history in minute detail, and rejected Glass's claim to have acted honestly since his deceptions as a journalist were revealed, instead finding "instances of dishonesty and disingenuousness persisting throughout that period".
[38] Glass tended to her in their home in Venice, Los Angeles and hired a housekeeper and aides to stay with her while he was at work.