The London School of Economics has condemned Panorama for using its students as cover during a visit to North Korea which took place in March in the name of the Grimshaw Club, a student society. LSE authorities say they had no advance knowledge of the trip or of its planning.
However, those with long memories recall one of the most successful people in getting information out of totalitarian regimes was actually a senior LSE lecturer — Geoffrey Stern.
“He was also a great conspirator, taking a small group of journalists — calling themselves writers, translators, publishers or just students — on a clandestine week-long trip to Albania in the early Eighties, when the country was rigidly closed and secretive to the point of paranoia,” reads his Guardian obituary from 2005 by Michael Simmons. “How he actually planned and organised the trip I do not know but it worked perfectly. It was fascinating and instructive throughout.
“By the end of the week, I was convinced that at least some of the Albanian officials probably knew as well as we did that we were all journalists but they felt they would have been compromised to shop us to their superiors.”
Maybe the North Koreans knew all along...
