Basically, you accuse Ratzinger and the Pope of dishonesty with Msgr. Lefebvre for very little reason, if any. There is no reason to think that Ratzinger was lying about the August 15th date, which he told to Msgr. Lefebvre. The idea that Msgr. Lefebvre had been through it before is ridiculous - the Protocol was the first time Rome had agreed to the consecration of a bishop, and previous negotiations were inconclusive because of Msgr. Lefebvre's intransigence against orthodox teaching like religious liberty.
1. "Basically, you accuse Ratzinger and the Pope of dishonesty with Msgr. Lefebvre..."
Let's put it this way--I don't believe they were dealing with him in a straight-forward way.
2. "for very little reason..."
For plenty of reasons. The Archbishop had twenty years of Vatican deception and hostility behind him, including a kangaroo tribunal that was supposed to be a cordial meeting and turned out to be an ambush. The fact that Rome wished to destroy traditional Catholicism was no secret to anybody; nor was Pope John Paul II sympathetic to Catholic Tradition. He had not elevated a single traditionalist during his pontificate, though many high appointments were liberals.
3. "There is no reason to think that Ratzinger was lying about the August 15th date..."
It is not a question of lying, but of whether this was a real date in the sense you suggest. It is only mentioned by the Archbishop in passing. The whole context as I read it suggests it was brought up merely as another example of how Rome might throw out a tantalizing date in order to string him along. It had happened before and when he would press the issue, it would always turn out the date was not definite. Lefebvre himself never took it seriously and, in fact, despaired of any consecrations that summer, making note that obstacles were already being thrown in his way by bureaucratic demands for more dossiers which involved more time wasted. He understood Rome was stalling--and elsewhere stated as much. In particular, that priest-secretary's phony letter, the one he was being asked to sign pretending to have been composed by Lefebvre himself and accusing himself of errors, made no mention of any kind of fixed date nor even of any definite promise of receiving a mandate for consecrations. It was this letter that convinced him finally not to trust Rome, that the stakes were too high--the survival of Catholic Tradition itself--for him to take any chances, and that he was in all probability being taken for a ride.
Here is a more direct response to the issue of whethr the date of August 15 was real--again, in the Archbishop's words:
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This is not possible. All this makes me hesitate. We asked the Cardinal when we would be able to consecrate a bishop. On the 30th of June? He said, "No, this is much too early. It takes time to make a bishop. In Germany it takes nine months to make a bishop." When I told that to Card. Oddi, he said, "That must be a beautiful baby then!" I said, "Well, give us a date. Let's be precise. The 15th of August?" "No, on August 15th there is no one in Rome. It is the holidays from July 15th to September 15th." "What about November 1st?" "I can't tell you." "What about Christmas?" "I don't know."
I said to myself, "Finished."