I recently read “Apollo 8” which goes into a lot of the background of the Apollo program, including the story about lemon (but not what the wife thought). Massive dysfunction in the production, the communications problems as you mentioned, on and on.
If you dig a bit deeper you will find out that Apollo 1 was sabotage.
The “accident” required human intervention.
Remember: NASA investigated themselves. There was zero chance they would tell the public what really happened.