Video: Mock Crisis, Real Players

Ted Koppel gets officials to act out a U.S.-Soviet confrontation

Soviet officials are already meeting in Moscow on a deepening crisis in Afghanistan as, 5,000 miles away in Washington, members of an American task force are rushed by police escort to the Old Executive Office Building. The U.S. President and Vice President have been disabled by a poison-gas attack. The Americans receive an intelligence briefing suggesting that maverick Soviet agents, seeking to undermine Mikhail Gorbachev and his international peace offensive, may have been behind the assassination attempt.

The year is 1991, and the scene is the beginning of a "crisis game" depicting what might happen in a superpower confrontation. Conceived, produced...

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