NASA vs Dr. Mitchell

Government sues Apollo 14 astronaut over lunar camera

(Reuters) - The U.S. government has sued a former NASA astronaut to recover a camera used to explore the moon's surface during the 1971 Apollo 14 mission after seeing it slated for sale in a New York auction. Click here to read the whole story. 

Does anyone have any thoughts on this one or am I the only one confused by the whole thing?  RedPillJunkie over at the Daily Grail has an interesting take on this:

What bothers me about this story is not that the government is fighting Mitchell over the ownership of this camera; what *does* bother me is that NASA is learning about the whereabouts of this historic piece of equipment after. 40. Years! (Full Article here)

The whole thing just strikes me as so arbitrary. As RedPillJunkie points out, the fact that NASA wants it's property back is fine, but why have they waited so long? I  don't really know what to think about this whole thing. It's not as if Dr. Mitchell has been keeping a low profile for the last 40 years or so. On the contrary he is one of the few other Astronauts who are probably at least casually known to people. Especially those that have an interest in Fortean and paranormal things.

Dr. Mitchell cofounded the Institute of Noetic Sciences (IONS) in 1973 which according to its website:

is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit research, education, and membership organization whose mission is supporting individual and collective transformation through consciousness research, educational outreach, and engaging a global learning community in the realization of our human potential.

Basically this organizations researches all kinds of paranormal things. Psychic abilities, human potential, life after death, consciousness studies, etc. One of the few places left that I can think of that still takes a look at parapsychology from a scientific point of view. 

In addition to this Dr. Mitchell has been pretty vocal about his belief in the existence of Extraterrestrial life in many different mediums. But none of this really explains NASA's somewhat questionable behavior in this matter. Really I guess we don't know enough about the circumstances surrounding the lawsuit. Hopefully we will be able to learn more as time goes on. That's all for now, more to come later. Also be sure to let me know what you think about this whole lawsuit!