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Borrowing a page from "The Man in the Iron Mask," an impostor poses as Cardinal Soucheck (Paul Stevens), the much-beloved spiritual leader of a Balkan nation, while the real Cardinal languishes in prision. It is all part of a scheme by would-be dictator General Zepke (Theodore Bikel) to gain control of the country and sway the Cardinal's followers to his side. To expedite the Cardinal's rescue and expose Zepke as a fraud, the IMF agents take advantage of a bacterial epidemic. This episode of Mission: Impossible makes extensive use of a special tubular device that had only recently been developed by the US aerospace industry. First broadcast November 17, 1968, "The Cardinal" was written by Robert E. Thompson.