 Its publisher Ed Keating and journalist Warren Hinckle, who themselves considered it "dramaturgically flawed," organized a committee to defend the play as a matter of free speech.In 2007, Ion Mihai Pacepa, a former Romanian spymaster, alleged that the play was part of a KGB campaign to discredit Pius XII.A leading German newspaper opined "that Hochhuth did not require any KGB assistance for his one-sided presentation of history."