Probably leaked on purpose... PSYOPS baby! Kinda like Reagan’s STARWARS.
Star Wars was not wholly psyops. Reagan did have the mililtary and NASA working on stuff. I believe the information leaked to Populaar Science et al set off the speculation that got pretty far fetched. The USSRians could not figure out how much was real. They just knew that a whole lot of money was going into ABM and satellite research and a bunch of satellites were being launched without announcements. Russians and Commies being naturally paranoid filled in the rest and did huge psyops on themselves.