All power NASA hierarchy?

[Ginnie]

Many HB seem to believe that the NASA hierarchy could control the space missions with an iron hand, could hide from its contractors major aspects of a hoaxed moon landing and could conduct its business in secret . They often say that NASA could lie to the public about what was really happening during the missions.

In 1964 Gary Flandro worked at JPL during his college holidays and was asked to join a group to calculate the trajectories for possible missions to Jupiter. Doing his calculations he noticed that in 1980 all the outer planets would line up on the same side of the sun - something the astronomers at JPL had missed. He told his boss of this rare opportunity (it only happens every 180 years) and planning for the Voyager missions started.
They would have to launch in 1978 or 1979 but by 1972 funds for the project dried up and NASA scaled down the mission to visit Jupiter and Saturn only.
Brad Smith, the imaging team leader was told by the NASA programme manager "not to contemplate any changes to the mission whatsoever". Mission scientist Garry Hunt remembers being told by NASA chiefs, "We are not, repeat not, going to Uranus and Neptune".
The mission scientists secretly designed extra fuel loads into the craft so they could go to Uranus and beyond. This was unknown to the NASA hierarchy and was hard to do because of the budgetary restraints, but was made possible.
Hunt said, "We'd miss Pluto, but you have to leave something for your kids".

Now, what I'm NOT saying is that mission scientists could hoax a mission. Everything Voyager eventually did, didn't remain secret forever, I'm sure there was a time well before Voyager launch time that all the programme details were eventually known to NASA chiefs
. What I am saying is that any hoaxed mission could not have been known by only a few people at the time. It is an obvious fact to us here, but not to the HB who seem to think most people involved in the Apollo missions could be in the dark about its true nature.

EDIT: New info...
quote from 'The Planets' by David McNab and James Younger:
(after Voyager 1 got propelled out of the plane of the planets)
"Voyager 2 had performed so well than NASA officials, who had by now got wind of Garry Hunt's covert programme, finally approved the Grand Tour...it was now entering uncharted territory, guided only by the distant glimmer of Uranus that lay four years ahead".
So it seems that secrets could be kept from NASA's top officials, not the other way around.

[Ginnie]

Some notes to the above:
Both Pioneer and Voyager probes are powered by plutonium generators and steered by several small rocket boosters.
Voyager 2 used the Saturn's gravity to assist it in being pushed to Uranus and Neptune. It used a gyroscope to navigate, using the light from the Earth, the stars and the approaching planet. Unlike Pioneer, which were fitted with a single scanning light sensor, Voyager 1 and 2 had high resolution colour television cameras on top of scanning platforms. They could send back images at the rate of one every minute - of course it took a while for them to actually get here.
NASA's mission statement of Voyager 2 on its website:
The primary mission was the exploration of Jupiter and Saturn. After making a string of discoveries there -- such as active volcanoes on Jupiter's moon Io and intricacies of Saturn's rings -- the mission was extended. Voyager 2 went on to explore Uranus and Neptune, and is still the only spacecraft to have visited those outer planets. The adventurers' current mission, the Voyager Interstellar Mission (VIM), will explore the outermost edge of the Sun's domain. And beyond.

[Count Zero]

I remember when all this was going down. The thing is, orbital dynamics dictated that the Uranus/Neptune window was there for the taking, and every space enthusiast knew it. Sky & Telescope magazine wrote about it in 1977, when the probes were launched. In the late 70's, the National Air and Space Museum showed computer animations of possible Uranus encounters in their planetary exploration hall.

Congress critters didn't know about such things. The upper NASA bureaucracy kept mum until they had some spectacular pictures to use to lobby for the extended mission.

The deciding factor was what sort of encounter they wanted at Saturn. Voyager 1 had a successful close encounter with Titan. If this had not happened, Voyager 2 would have been re-targeted for a close Titan encounter, but this would have lost them the chance to proceed to Uranus and Neptune. It was a tense and exciting time.

[JayUtah]

One of Ronald Reagan's operatives had been the most instrumental in quashing the Grand Tour concept on boondoggle grounds. Wisely some of the people at NASA, knowing that such a possibility wouldn't arise again for some 700 years, realized that presidents come and go, but the planets endure forever.