The Gazette had a scary moment last week when it appeared as though we might have a chance to report first-hand from inside Camp X-Ray. Our intrepid reporter sent to cover the IBA conference was detained at US immigration for not having a visa; it took a sharp official to point to the small print at the back of the visa waiver form, which states that the programme does not apply to foreign media representatives (not that this provision has ever been raised before in several visits to cover conferences in the US). Our lonely hack was marched off by a grim-faced guard to a holding room that contained a motley bunch of visa violators being quizzed over how long they had known their new wives. Happily, common sense prevailed and the authorities decided that allowing the Gazette in to cover a legal conference would not bring down democracy as we know it. Various Law Society officials on the same plane had hung around to find out what was happening, and the shaken reporter was not encouraged by a former president explaining that his (albeit tongue-in-cheek) contribution to the crisis was to tell another immigration official that they might as well let our man in, 'because he's not a very good journalist anyway'.