My memory of reading Bamford's book was that it was an APPROVED proposal, which was made obsolete by the Cuban Missile Crisis. The DOJ approved that plan, and many of the people involved in that are still on the scene today. But, I read that book a decade or more ago so maybe I'm misremembering.
Exactly how many people involved in a scheme during the early 1960’s would still be “on the scene today”? If one of the coauthors of the plan was a 20 year old intern who had a long government career, that person would be 75 today. “Many of the people” involved seems unlikely.
(There are probably all kinds of crazy military proposals that get rejected)