In the Aug. 23 My View, " 'Reagan' play has no relation to facts," Donald Baucom refers to an article I wrote about Richard Rhodes' new play, Reykyavik. Baucom states that, while Rhodes' work made for a good "morality play, it has little to do with historical reality."

First, a reminder of the basic facts. At the conference in Reykyavik in October of 1986, Reagan and Gorbachev came heartbreakingly close to signing an agreement to abolish all nuclear weapons. But the agreement failed over the issue of Star Wars: Reagan would not agree to confine the experimental testing of Stars Wars to the laboratory for 10 years, and Gorbachev would not accept its unrestrained development.

"The negotiations foundered over what has turned out to be a technical fantasy," I wrote in my article. Bauman objects, strenuously. He lauds Star Wars as a scientific achievement of major importance and claims, "The SDI program that Reagan started has continued through the three presidential administrations that followed the Reagan presidency and now into President Obama's first term. This program is the source of the missile-defense system that the U.S. currently operates."

But is that true? The distinctive feature of Star Wars, in contrast to the ongoing research into missile-defense systems, was its conception of space-based systems capable of destroying incoming missiles. Almost all the scientists who evaluated the program at the time said that it was, for the foreseeable future, a delusion. Today, after 23 years of intensive research and development and more than $100 billion spent, the concept of an impervious missile shield is still a technological impossibility for the indefinite future. The trustworthy capacity to shoot down even one missile, not to mention hundreds, is beyond attainment.

Furthermore, President George H. W. Bush, recognizing the unrealistic character of Star Wars, changed the concept and name itself. President Clinton canceled the program in 1993.

The most distressing irony of Reykyavik is that Reagan had no need to cling to his right to test Star Wars outside the laboratory for 10 years because there was nothing to test.

But Baucom goes much further. He offers a different interpretation of the Reykyavik meeting itself. "I wonder," Baucum muses, "if the play will include the fact that a number of top-level Reagan officials received indications before the summit that the Soviets were setting a trap for the Reagan administration."

A trap? What kind of trap? Well, Baucum doesn't say. Instead he suggests that if Reagan had agreed to disarm, terrible things would ensue: "Once Reagan agreed (to Gorbachev's proposals) the Soviets would then use propaganda and America's own missile-defense foes to force Reagan to confine SDI to the laboratory while the Soviets themselves would be free to walk back from their own obligations." Really?

Every credible historian who has looked seriously at Reykyavik credits Gorbachev with a series of bold, far-reaching proposals for disarmament, most stunningly the idea of eliminating nuclear weapons. These proposals are in the record, in the verbatim transcripts. And why should we doubt them?

The Soviet Union was on the verge of economic collapse. They had spent themselves into financial exhaustion in the 1970s catching up with the United States in numbers of nuclear weapons. Their economy was in shambles. Gorbachev told others in the Kremlin that the entire economic system was a "mess," radical reform was the only way out, including a drastic reduction in military spending.

As for Reagan, he was in fact a nuclear abolitionist; he hated nuclear weapons. But to his right-wing advisers like Richard Perle, the idea of nuclear disarmament was tantamount to national suicide. When Reagan was forced to choose between giving up the testing of Star Wars outside the laboratory or giving up the entire package of nuclear disarmament, he demurred, he sought counsel. George Shultz was prepared to go along with the Gorbachev proposal, yes. Richard Perle said don't do it, Gorbachev was trying to trick him, to kill Star Wars. Reagan listened to Perle.

In short, Reagan was one decision away from presidential greatness. Too bad. History is unforgiving.

Jerry Delaney is a writer living in Santa Fe.