not sure which 'guy on Project Camelot' you are are referring to.
But in 2006-2010 there was a group of renegade academics, retired mil/intel guys, and scientists/engineers who contributed to a publication called the Exopolitics Journal.
http://www.exopoliticsjournal.com/
They turned out some pretty good stuff (and a bit of nonsense too) and the consensus was that, yes, clandestine military projects have existed since at least the 1950s to deal with the problems and opportunities posed by Visitors from elsewhere in the cosmos.
A major reason POTUS created the Space Force is to reign in those clandestine programs, many of which had gone rogue and no longer answered to Congressional or Executive authority.
It's not that we need to 'go to Mars' or 'return to the Moon' per se; it's that we have to get the existing manned programs on those celestial bodies and elsewhere in (and beyond) the Solar System under proper legal control.