Joined to say that my father, now deceased, worked on this project. He didn't talk about it until years later, when he saw documentaries on TV with project managers or other leadership discussing MOL. Guess he thought it was ok to talk about it if they were, but he was very angry at the time that they'd broken their secrecy vows.
He said some of the tech ended up in the space shuttle, so it wasn't a complete waste.
Just a personal memory... Years ago, I worked on a job out at Mojave flight test area. One of the F-4 pilots was a man named Dick Lawyer. I got to know him a little bit, the job was completed, and I moved on. Years later I heard that he died. It was then that I read about his participation in the MOL program. I was floored. He never, ever talked about it or had any hint of it in his office. Cool guy with a good sense of humor. I would have loved to talk to him about MOL in detail.