"We're going to Bethesda," Charles Lane, the editor of The New Republic, told Stephen Glass, the writer of a May 18 story, "Hack Heaven," that was being called factually challenged by reporters over at Forbes Digital Tool, the Forbes magazine Web site. And in Bethesda, Maryland, at the building where Glass had supposedly covered a computer-hackers' convention, Lane says his twenty-five-year-old star gave "the most detailed step-by-step account" of where he had sat, and with whom he had spoken.

It was only when Lane reminded him that the building's log and security videos would show who was actually there that day that Glass broke down and sobbed. Yes, he confessed, he had made up the conference. In truth, Lane says, the entire article had been created "out of whole cloth." So, it turns out, were others.

Stephen Glass was a bright, prolific writer and prodigious reporter. He had a likable demeanor, an eye for detail, and an ear for language. He also had a fatal flaw -- a stunning lack of integrity. At his firing, Lane recalls Glass pleading: "Do you hate me? Do you hate me?" "I don't wish him ill," Lane says now. "I don't wish him death. I just don't want him to be in journalism."

How was it possible that editors and checkers, who make their living as professional skeptics, got so snookered? When did it begin, and why?

At the Heritage Institute's Policy Review, where Glass worked for about a year before joining The New Republic in September 1995, editor Adam Meyerson says an investigation of the six pieces Glass wrote for the magazine, including two after he left, found only one apparent fabrication. In a May/June 1997 article titled "Mrs. Colehill Thanks God For Private Social Security," Glass wrote of a Wendy Colehill, a Texas Burger King cashier who lost her husband Bill in a car crash and made a "passionate speech" over his grave, thanking God "that some wise men" replaced Social Security at her husband's county job with a private system that gave her enough of a death benefit to raise Bill Jr. and pay her own tuition at paralegal school. The problem: Heritage has not been able to find any record of a Wendy or Bill Colehill in Texas. Meyerson said he is "totally surprised."

At The New Republic, where, ironically enough, Glass started out checking other writers' stories for accuracy, he wrote
forty-one pieces, all of which were rechecked in what staff members dubbed Operation Broken Glass. In May, Lane announced that two additional stories "cannot be substantiated." They were "Plotters," Glass's account of a meeting of anti-Clinton activists in Virginia, and "Monica Sells," a titillating tale of a convention of political-novelty vendors whose Monica Lewinsky-inspired wares included a "Monicondom" -- advertised as "thinner, specially designed for oral sex."

Targets of Glass's pen, meanwhile, were crying foul. American Conservative Union chairman David Keene, for one, hotly contested Glass's March 31, 1997 "Spring Breakdown" piece, about last year's annual Conservative Political Action Conference. In it, Glass claims to have happened upon two young conservatives, a man and an unbuttoned woman, "getting to second base" in a men's room, two others snorting "what looks like cocaine," and a "get-naked room" where one couple makes out while others watch TV in the buff.

Former New Republic editor Michael Kelly, who edited that piece, said in May he was still not convinced that it was false. However, he was questioning another article, "Peddling Poppy," in which Glass recounts a visit to the wildly named "First Church of George Herbert Walker Bush Christ," run by evangelicals who believe the former president is the reincarnation of Jesus. Kelly, now a columnist for the National Journal, added: "The thought has crossed my mind that I'm a goddam idiot."

Then, in its June 29 edition, The New Republic announced the stunning results of its investigation: Stephen Glass fabricated all or part of twenty-seven articles. Most were "a blend of fact and fiction." Among the false details: the church dedicated to George Bush, and the accounts of "drug use, drinking," and sexual misbehavior among young conservatives in "Spring Breakdown."

Friends and colleagues describe Glass as an extraordinarily affable but insecure person who needs constant affirmation. Something apparently drove him to assume more and more work -- not only his full-time New Republic job but more and bigger free-lance projects and, beginning last January, law school in the evenings, at Georgetown.

Why didn't The New Republic and the other leading publications for whom Glass wrote -- Harper's, George, and Rolling Stone (all of which have severed their relationships with him) -- catch him sooner? It's tempting to blame the fact-checking systems, or lack thereof. Kelly was the first to start a checking procedure at The New Republic, but he had only three full-time checkers plus interns for a weekly with a large news hole. After Lane took over, the number shrank to zero for a period, then rose to just one, plus interns. "Plainly," says Lane, checking at The New Republic, as well as other magazines Glass deceived, was "not good enough."

Yet the truth is Glass gamed the system, and brilliantly. He'd often submit stories late to the checkers so they were pressed for time. When they questioned his material, Lane says, Glass would provide forged faxes on fake letterheads of phony organizations, as well as fictitious notes, even voice mail or actual calls from people pretending to be sources.

"Any fact-checking system is built on trust," Kelly says. "If a reporter is willing to fake notes, it defeats the system. Anyway, the real vetting system is not fact-checking but the editor. It's the editor's responsibility to spot red flags."

Kelly and Lane both wish they had spotted some. Among them: Glass's extraordinary quantity of copy. "His time budget couldn't have balanced," Lane now says. Another flag was a volume of angry letters-to-the-editor, which Kelly says he dismissed as a natural outgrowth of controversial pieces. "He had less than I did."

Shouldn't all the unnamed sources, obscure organizations, and wild scenes viewed only by the writer have been another tip-off? "I've searched my soul and asked, "Why didn't my bullshit meter go off?" says Lane. "But it's hilarious. By the time I got there so many wild stories had run and seemingly stood up, I trusted him."

Some journalists see in Glass the dark side of a new magazine journalism that puts a premium on sensationalism and style. One is Tom Rosenstiel, director of the Project for Excellence in Journalism. "It's fair to say there are more rewards today in journalism for work that's provocative and gets attention than has been true in the recent past," he says, adding that since magazines also tend to put a premium on fresh young voices, some young people rise without having benefited from "the apprenticeship system that characterized journalism for long time."

But those who knew Glass insist that his story is more about one rotten apple. After all, many writers are under pressure and don't make stuff up. "This is not about magazines or the news process," says John Judis, a senior editor at The New Republic. "It's about pathology."

If there is any value to the saga of what may be the biggest hoax in modern American journalistic history, it's that it has many journalists asking questions about their checking systems. As for Glass, some say he'd make a socko screenwriter. But he is planning a different denouement -- a new career as a lawyer.

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