The only way to practically fake the landing is to send the command module to orbit the moon and return as you need the signals coming from the right location or the Russians will know the truth. And then f Russia knows they will scream it from the roof tops as the whole point was to one up the Russians.
And even with the command module sent to orbit the moon you have the issues of spies. Russia infiltrated the nuclear program under wartime security so that doubt they are going to have issues infiltrating NASA and the Lunar fake landing program.
This gets even easier to infiltrate when you consider the fake will require the cooperation of a number of Hollywood people as you will need the best special effects people in the world to pull this off.
So you have a program that can get to the moon and yet you add in the trouble to fake the landing, I think it may be easier to just build the lander and actually do it.
And even with the command module sent to orbit the moon you have the issues of spies. Russia infiltrated the nuclear program under wartime security so that doubt they are going to have issues infiltrating NASA and the Lunar fake landing program.
This gets even easier to infiltrate when you consider the fake will require the cooperation of a number of Hollywood people as you will need the best special effects people in the world to pull this off.
So you have a program that can get to the moon and yet you add in the trouble to fake the landing, I think it may be easier to just build the lander and actually do it.