The Man Who Knew Too Much
Desmond Patrick Costello was one of the most brilliant New Zealanders of his generation – a linguist of genius who spoke ten languages and could learn one in a month. He was also a war hero who used his linguistic skills to lead his battered unit from behind German lines in Greece to safety in an incredible journey of bravery and daring. Appointed as a diplomat to the New Zealand legation in Moscow after the war he wrote the first western eyewitness account of the Nazi death camps. He was also the first western intelligence officer to state – correctly – that the Soviets had the atom bomb. Was Paddy Costello New Zealand’s own Kim Philby, the infamous British Intelligence agent who became a Russian spy? Costello’s life intersected in dramatic fashion with so many key points of history. He was involved in a Cold War scandal in which notorious Cold War spies, Morris and Lona Cohen, used New Zealand passports to enter the UK and spy on the British nuclear programme…but was Costello a spy and a traitor? This documentary explores the complex and compelling evidence for and against the claim that he was a Russian spy?