Fail Safe is a 2000 televised broadcast play, based on Fail-Safe, the Cold War novel by Eugene Burdick and Harvey Wheeler. The play, broadcast live in black and white on CBS, starred George Clooney, Richard Dreyfuss, Harvey Keitel, and Noah Wyle, and was one of the few live dramas on American television since its Golden Age in the 1950s and 1960s. The broadcast was introduced by Walter Cronkite (his introduction, also broadcast in black and white, is included in the DVD releases of the film): it was directed by veteran British filmmaker Stephen Frears. The novel was first adapted into a 1964 film of the same name directed by Sidney Lumet; the TV version is shorter than the 1964 film due to commercial airtime and omits a number of subplots. Plot In the early-to-mid-1960s, the height of the Cold War between the United States and the Soviet Union. An unknown aircraft approaches North America from Europe. U.S. Vindicator bombers of the Strategic Air Command (SAC) are scrambled to their fail safe points near the Russian Far East. The bombers have orders not to proceed past their fail safe points without receiving a special attack code. The original "threat" is proven to be innocuous and recall orders are issued. However, due to a technical failure, the attack code, CAP811, is transmitted to Group Six, which consists of six Vindicator supersonic bombers and four escort fighters. Colonel Grady, the commanding pilot of Group Six, tries to contact SAC headquarters in Omaha to verify the fail-safe order (called "Positive Check"), but due to Soviet radio jamming, Grady cannot hear Omaha. Concluding that the attack order and the radio jamming could only mean war, Grady commands Group Six towards Moscow, their intended destination. At meetings in Omaha, the Pentagon, and in the fallout shelter of the White House, U.S. politicians and scholars debate the implications of the attack. Professor Groteschele suggests the United States follow this accidental attack with a full-scale attack to force the Soviets to surrender. The U.S. President orders the Air Force to send the four escort fighters after the bombers to shoot down the Vindicators. The attempt is to show that the Vindicator attack is an accident, not a full-scale nuclear assault. After using their afterburners in an attempt to catch the bombers, the fighters run out of fuel and crash, dooming the pilots to die of exposure in the