Carryfast:
Rjan:
[…]
Firstly ‘national interest’ in this case would be convincing the opposition that America has the technology to deliver whatever it wants wherever it wants using ballistic weapons.
Yes, a show of military power is an obvious motive. But given that both superpowers were able to access space at the time, why make a big spectacle of landing men on the moon, if it couldn’t be done?
Moreover, I’d suggest that the main function of the moon landing was not as a show of military power (although it was certainly ominous for America’s foes), but as a show of ideological power at home and everywhere, a marvel of the power of American capitalism.
If you are caught bluffing your enemy in military deterrence, there are not necessarily any consequences - nobody expects generals to tell the truth to their enemies. Comparably, if it turned out those TV licencing detector vans were empty all those years, we would all express sardonic laughter.
But in an ideological bluff on the scale of the moon landing, if discovered, American society would immediately turn grey and fall apart at the cellular level. It would be the ideological equivalent of Mount Vesuvius blowing its top - the sudden release of the toxic gusts of deception would asphyxiate the majority, and the fallout shortly afterwards would burn everything to ashes. These ideological risks that you believe bind the conspirators together in silence, are precisely the risks that would have prevented any sane person allowing the conspiracy to proceed in the first place, and had it somehow occurred, anyone in contact with it would themselves have been ideologically sickened, eventually either vomiting the truth upon the populace or becoming vulnerable to infection by the agents of enemy states.
To a considerably lesser extent, this is precisely what you have seen with the Manning and Snowdon disclosures - disclosures which have been shocking but hardly surprising. To keep secret anything that is ideologically reprehensible, those telling the truth only have to be lucky once, whereas the American state has to be lucky every time.
As for the bs of not keeping everyone involved silent.You do know that those involved in the UK defence industry are subject to signing the official secrets act as part of the job.
Indeed, and look at how many disclosures occur anyway! Until the 60s, the Russian desk at MI6 was being run by Soviet agents, all of whom risked the gallows!
With grassing up a bluff being seen as no different to grassing up a piece of superior technology in that regard.These are the rules just regarding sensitive but unclassified information let alone the classified nature of the Apollo project.
But the Apollo project as a whole is not classified - its results are known worldwide, and are considered one of the spectacular crowning achievements of human civilisation. A lie on this scale would have left Goebbels shellshocked and gasping for air.
While if it wasn’t seen as a project subject to national security and defence implications there obviously would have been no need to classify any of it. 
But nobody argues that it doesn’t have national security and defence implications - one would expect there to be classified information in respect of it.
