Star Trek: Deep Space Nine episode 6.19, first aired on April 15, 1998. (Production number ST:DS9 543)

Stardate 51721.3. This episode is told by Sisko as he records a personal log of what happened over the past few days. . .

It started when they received word that the Dominion had captured Betazed, considered an important world of the Federation. Sisko believes that lack of assistance from the Romulans is causing the Klingon-Federation to lose the war and so he asks Garak to help him trick the Romulans into joining the alliance.

In order to convince the Romulans to break their nonaggression treaty with the Dominion, Sisko and Garak construct a fake hologram of a Dominion meeting where the Dominion plots to attack the Romulans after defeating the rest of the Alpha and Beta Quadrants and show this hologram to visiting Romulan senator Vreenak.

Vreenak discovers the hologram to be fake and leaves to inform headquarters of Sisko's attempted deceit. However, Garak plants a bomb on Vreenak's ship. After the bomb explodes while en route to Romulus, the Romulans will discover the recording in the wreckage and, predicts Garak, believe the things that allowed Vreenak to discover it to be fake were simply from the explosion.

In my opinion, this is one of the best Deep Space 9 episodes ever.

Cast
Avery Brooks as Benjamin Sisko
Rene Auberjonois as Odo
Michael Dorn as Worf
Terry Farrell as Jadzia Dax
Cirroc Lofton as Jake Sisko
Colm Meaney as Miles O'Brien
Armin Shimerman as Quark
Alexander Siddig as Dr. Julian Bashir
Nana Visitor as Kira Nerys

Guests
Andrew J. Robinson as Garak
Jeffrey Combs as Weyoun
Casey Biggs as Damar
Howard Shangraw as Tolar
Stephen McHattie as Vreenak

Creative Staff:
Director: Victor Lobl
Story By: Peter Allen Fields
Teleplay By: Michael Taylor


Deep Space Nine Episodes - Season 6
Previous: Inquisition (DS9)
Next: His Way (DS9)

Some info from Statrek.com.

Yet Sisko couldn't do it himself. As Garak pointed out, he had to go to Garak for help from the beginning, knowing, consciously or not, that he would never be able to go through with it by himself, that he had to have someone like Garak, not just to obtain the data rod and manufacture the holographic record, but someone who could bypass any of Sisko's moral obligations and do what was needed, that is, not just trick the Romulans, but kill to pull it off, something Sisko couldn't have done (though he can kill in battle—though they all can, when it comes down to it... except maybe Chief O'Brien, who was left feeling so awful after the first time he picked up a phaser and killed an attacker way back before Deep Space Nine, before the Enterprise).

As to whether Kirk, Picard or Janeway would have done it, we haven't seen any of the three put in such situations as Sisko was in. He was CO of the one thing standing at the gate to the Alpha Quadrant and had been in the center of a long, actually-declared war against an enemy that cloned its soldiers and change its appearance. Friends and comrades were dying right and left. Although supposedly we were seeing Picard in the same political situation, we never saw him and the Enterprise actually involved in the Dominion War. We've seen them all being pretty tough when it comes to protecting their crew (think of Janeway in Equinox); it's possible that when pushed, for those they love and feel a duty towards, they would go as far as Sisko did in IPM.

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