I'll check out the misinfo over at National People's Republic Radio,
but meanwhile I've been following the story all week and advised my news clients as follows:

Reality check. The tests were never part of a NASA program. There never was any 'training' for space flight. Secrecy, if any, was shallow and brief -- the theme was widely discussed and debated in public in 1962-3. No flight program was ever 'cancelled', nor were the women ever 'rejected'. See paras 16, 17, and 18 for documentation from the National Air & Space Museum's chief space historian.

Sadly, this garble -- and fictionalization -- may detract from what the women's project (later dubbed the 'Mercury-13' group) actually accomplished in advancing the cause of U.S. gender-neutral access to spaceflight opportunities

The hype also confuses the question of which approach -- the US path or the Soviet/Russian 'stunt' path -- led to proper contemporary policies and practices regarding women in space. The Russians went for the 'stunts', but the symbolism was hollow [even if widely successful among impressionable people], and the current reality for women in the Russian space program is grim.

My comments on the University of Wisconsin (Oshkosh) website http://www.uwosh.edu/mercury13/

“In the early days of the Space Race, 25 women were asked to train in secret as astronauts.” FALSE. Some women were asked by Dr. Lovelace, independent of NASA, to undergo physical screening similar to that used for the Mercury astronauts. There was no “training” for space flight. There was no significant “secret” about it -- their activities, their names, and the controversy of changing existing astronaut requirements so women could be admitted, were all well publicized in 1962-1963.

“In summer of 1961, just before leaving for the next phase of training at the Naval Aviation Center in Pensacola, Fla., the women received telegrams telling them not to come. Due to the prejudices of the times, the project was cancelled.” FALSE – there was no “next phase of training”, only some additional medical screening sponsored by Dr. Lovelace, who had reserved time on the Pensacola facilities but could not come up with funding for their use [these were tightly scheduled facilities that were allocated to various projects that could pay for them]. There was no existing project to GET cancelled – the lack of any budget shows there never HAD been a formal program beyond Lovelace’s professional interest. Conjuring up ‘prejudices of the times’ is political propaganda, not legitimate history.

This morning's major Associated Press story by Todd Richmond can be seen at
http://www.nwfdailynews.com/article/4590. On some links the headline is an accurate "13 American women would-be astronauts to be honored by the University of Wisconsin", but on others (e.g., ABC News) they are falsely referred to as "First women astronaut trainees ".

AP: "The 13, who trained in secret in the early 1960s, had their dreams dashed when they were told NASA wasn't interested in their training, just days before the group was to leave for spaceflight simulation tests in Pensacola, Fla.'" FALSE [see above] -- the group never 'trained', it wasn't 'in secret'.

AP: "The 13 female pilots were initially part of the United States' effort to catch up to the Soviet space program, which launched the first man, Yuri Gagarin, into space in April 1961. But NASA pulled the plug in the 11th hour." FALSE. The pilots were part of medical screening tests organized by a private medical clinic that also did astronaut screening, pilot screening, and other medical testing for various US government pilot programs, but there was no 'program' that they were part of. There never was any 'plug' to be 'pulled'.

AP: "In 1963, Soviet cosmonaut Valentina Tereshkova became the first woman in space. The first American woman to enter space, Sally Ride, didn't launch until 1983." CONTEXT: The naked gimmickry of the Tereshkova mission was widely suspected even back then and has been confirmed by subsequent space history. Once new categories of space fliers were made possible by bigger spacecraft, and once women overcame U.S. military bureaucratic bars to entering key training programs, they rapidly flowed through the pipelines into astronaut service [lowering such gender bars probably WAS significantly accelerated by the Soviet stunt]. Today there have been dozens of American (and other Western nationalities) in space, but only three Russians ever -- Tereshkova, plus a Soviet AF Marshall's daughter for a stunt 'first woman's spacewalk', and the wife of a cosmonaut who became deputy director of the Russian spaceship factory... nobody else, ever and little prospects.... See http://www.jamesoberg.com/tereshkova.pdf