Welcome to the board! I have an Uncle Jim, but I don't think you're him.

I'm not one of the Apollo experts who will no doubt tell you more than you could have ever hoped (or wanted) to know about that imprint, but I'm awake and bored so I thought I'd write up a brief preliminary reply.

First, I went over to the ALSJ and found the picture there, then I crossreferenced it with the appropraite passages in the journal itself. I reproduce the relevant passage here:

BEGIN TRANSCRIPT FROM ALSJ:

110:47:17 McCandless: Roger. Out.

[After finishing the plus-Y pan, Buzz will take some more pictures of the spacecraft. However, during the 1991 mission review, we thought it was Neil who took those pictures, a conclusion influenced, in part, by Neil's statement at 110:46:36 and others that follow.]
110:47:18 Aldrin: It's very surprising, the very surprising lack of penetration of all four of the foot pads. I'd say if we were to try and determine just how far below the surface they would have penetrated, you'd measure (depths of)two or three inches, wouldn't you say, Neil?
110:47:37 Armstrong: At the most, yes. That Y-strut there is probably even less than that. (Long Pause)

[Buzz comes back to the LM near the plus-Y (north) strut and takes AS11-40- 5917 and 5918, which are both close-ups of the plus-Y footpad. Journal Contributor Ken MacTaggart has noticed that the apparent, triangular-shaped imprint next to the footpad in 5917 can also be seen in Neil's full-frontal portrait of Buzz, AS11-40- 5903. In 5903, the "imprint" looks more like marks left by a cable or strap.]

END TRANSCRIPT FROM ALSJ.

So they don't know what that imprint is, but it's no big deal.

Thus usual, and I think effective, counterargument to your sort of claim goes a little something like this: I have no idea what that imprint is, or why there appears to be a couple grains of first on top of it. But questioning the truth of the Apollo missions based on that evidence, and ignoring the uber-preponderance of evidence that it did actually happen, is a weak argument at best.

As for the broken cameras, etc.: This is one of those HB things that tend to get on people's nerves around here. If everything goes perfectly, the HBs say: "How could things go so perfectly on such a complicated mission? That's very suspicious!" If things break they say: "What doesn't NASA want you to see? This is very suspicious."

Regarding those military secrets that go to the grave with those involved: Of course there is no actual way to test your hypothesis, because we only know about the great many secrets that come out. The thing is, most of the secrets that have come out are still unknown to the general public, who assume that there aren't truckloads of Cold War ex-secrets floating around in the government documents sections of their local libraries. I do a bit of work in this area, so I come across fun Cold War stuff pretty often. Furthermore, if all the people working on Apollo, even just the upper echelon, knew it was a hoax, that is still hundreds of people. Hundreds of people don't keep anything secret. If only two or three people knew it was to be faked, and orchestrated it that way during development, the engineers would have figured it out. When you tell an engineer to build X to be able to do Y, that's what you'll get - you'll get a LM capable of doing all the things that you tell the engineers it has to do, even if you are just trying to create a hoax. And of you give them false guidelines, they will figure it out very quickly.

Aporetic