There were serious thoughts of using a nuke on the moon to blow chucks of regolith back to Earth. Seriously. Carl Sagan worked on the math behind it, and it was certainly within the technological capability of the US to do in the near future (from a late 1950s perspective).
Imagine that mission going wrong?
"Uh, Washington? We've lost control of our Moon Missile, and it's going to hit the Earth sometime in the next three months, give or take 8 weeks. And the bomb is armed..."
At least if it had hit the moon, it would have been a little harder for idiots to deny it happened. "Yes Johnny, your grandfather was looking at the moon back in 1963, with his 12 inch telescope. That's why he has that hole burned through his skull."
Alvis 3.1