Mock Crisis, Real Players

By BRUCE VAN VOORST

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 and anchored by Nightline's Ted Koppel, the one-hour program, The Koppel Report: The Blue X Conspiracy, will be broadcast by ABC on Thursday (Dec. 7) at 10 p.m. (EST). It is the first time that such a televised exercise has featured actual U.S. and Soviet foreign policy and military officials playing the roles of government figures. "I've played simulations against 'red' teams all my professional life," says retired Army Chief of Staff Edward Meyer, who acts as Deputy Secretary of Defense. "This was the first time the red team was made up of real reds -- Russians who think and act like Russians."

The show was taped in simultaneous sessions in Washington and Moscow. The participants responded to developments concocted by "control teams" behind the scenes. Koppel headed the team in Washington, and TIME editor at large Strobe Talbott supervised the Soviet operation at the headquarters of the State Committee for Television and Radio in Moscow. Koppel and Talbott kept in constant touch over an open telephone line. They were assisted by experts who helped improvise minicrises as the scenario unfolded, translated "hot-line" messages that flashed back and forth between the capitals by fax, and doubled as supporting actors when the stars demanded an on-camera briefing.

Reassuringly, the more dangerous and uncertain the game becomes on The Blue X Conspiracy, the more cautious the players turn on both sides. When word reaches the Soviets that the Afghan mujahedin rebels, backed by the U.S., have attacked the key Afghan air base at Bagram with chemical weapons, Georgi Korniyenko, a retired Deputy Foreign Minister and longtime aide to Andrei Gromyko, warns his colleagues not to "jump to the conclusion that this step was sanctioned by the highest leadership of the U.S. Administration."

The American policymakers show similar restraint when the controllers try to unnerve them by having a U.S. KC-135 tanker aircraft stray into Soviet airspace and a U.S. destroyer accidentally ram a Soviet submarine. In the role of Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff is Admiral William Crowe Jr., who in reality stepped down from that position only the day before the taping. "These things happen," he says.

The Blue X Conspiracy contains reminders of how the current climate of U.S.-Soviet relations affects decision making, whether in a mock crisis or a real one. Such a game would probably not have been played in the depths of the cold war, but if it had, there would probably have been considerably more saber rattling, perhaps even nuclear warnings. In the Gorbachev era, both sides go out of their way to avoid escalation. The Soviets cancel strategic exercises because they might be misunderstood. In the investigation of the poison-gas attack in Washington, Georgi Arbatov, the director of the Institute of U.S.A. and Canada Studies, who plays a national security adviser to the Kremlin, orders the KGB to work directly with the CIA.

The show also illustrates the way leaders must expect the unexpected and not always believe what they hear. The Soviet side is distressed as Washington gets mired in the constitutional procedures for authorizing the next in line -- the Speaker of the House -- to act as President. Later, the American team is incensed by an intelligence report, which proves to be erroneous, that the Afghan army has fired Soviet missiles armed with chemical warheads into mujahedin refugee camps in Pakistan.

Even in the tensest moments, both sides are sensitive to how the world views the confrontation. Congressman Les Aspin, chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, who plays the White House chief of staff, leaves at one point to hold a press conference. On the Moscow end, Yevgeni Velikhov, vice president of the Academy of Sciences, reminds his comrades that they need to keep the Supreme Soviet, or parliament, informed of developments.

Velikhov and Arbatov are, in fact, both advisers to Gorbachev. They came to the TV set straight from a stormy government meeting and brought with them a sense of reality that put The Blue X Conspiracy in perspective. While waiting ^ for a reply to a hot-line message to Washington, the Soviet team agreed that, however complex and serious, the problems in the simulation paled compared with those Gorbachev faces in the real world.

With reporting by Ann Blackman/Moscow