Those conversations quoted in the article say it all. Amazingly, this has never been made into a big deal by the MSM. We have credible, respected, admired people (the astronauts) making references to beings, UFOs, mining activities, structures, etc and no one is jumping up and down and saying "Holy $hit, they ARE real!"
Although the Vietnam war was taking a huge chunk out of the budget, it should have been nothing more than a delay in us going back to the moon. By 1973 we were scaling back on defense spending related to the war and I would think that a return to the moon would have been a nice distraction.
It seems as though we were either intimidated by what we saw there or perhaps we were warned away by the elements working within our government.