This is not a covert operation, centered principally around CIA agents or other professionals committed to stealth and secrecy.

? A fake moon landing would be the very blackest of black programs/SAPs. Of course the people working on it would be committed to stealth and secrecy.

This is a massive operation that would have involved a large number of scientists and technicians (and just civilians, generally), with several major observable events (i.e. the launch).

I've already pointed out that the satellite programs like KH-13 involved at minimum thousands of scientists/technicians/civilians. So your point must solely be 'my heuristic is valid when there is high profile media coverage'.

But what about the constant media coverage of nuclear explosions and the media assurance to civilians that there was nothing to fear, even though the scientists suspected or knew that the fallout really was dangerous? (You may remember the settlements made a few years ago to Nevadans). High profile events (nuke tests aren't subtle), thousands of involved civilians, etc. Yet...

I'm sure it also involved numerous corporations who had to build materials and keep some form of records.

Yes, no doubt the corporations who consume $50 billion every year in the black budget, and who have consumed similar amounts every year since the Cold War started, have kept meticulous records. For all the good that has done the rest of us...

This is not at all true of something like a moon landing; numerous civilians would probably be aware of the fact that the government was trying to pull a fast one.

A Noble Lie as part of the Cold War against those genocidal atheist Communist foreigners. Where were all these civilians blowing the whistle in things like the Tuskegee experiments? (Murdering a bunch of black people would seem to not need be broadcast on TV before someone says to themselves, 'Hey! Isn't this insanely cartoon-cackling evil?') The Tonkin Gulf? How many of the Plumbers (all civilians, all cognizant of their criminality) blew the whistle?

For any specific, conspicuous, high-profile government program or event involving large numbers of civilian participants, is it likely that the government managed to fool the public and then maintain perfect silence? No, no it is not.

I feel as if this is a good example of disagreements being dishonest. I've stuck only to highly mainstream, well-established conspiracies and systems of evil in just America, and haven't even touched upon the ones which haven't been definitively proven (even though basic logic tells me that some of them are probably true), but your position remains the same as ever. Someone is being intransigent here.