He knew his way around Area 51, and he was famously named by presidential adviser Harold Moundgren, as being the person who had briefed Moundgren on other world technologies.
Harold Malmgren was presidential advisor for JFK at the time, and he was in charge of White House efforts around this Bluegill Triple Prime Test.
So given that Harold Malmgren was in charge of the nuclear test for the White House, he decided to scope things out with Lawrence Preston Geiss.
Firstly, we have circumstantial evidence of Harold Maumgren brought into the Nixon administration in 1971.
Harold was, you know, self-consciously not a self-promoter.