ATC watcher has it bang on the money about witnesses getting the sequence of events mixed up. I heard this from the head of an Accident Investigation Board.
IMHO he has it slightly wrong on the Airbus front however. Airbus are only advisors to the NTSB, who are responsible for publishing teh definitive report. Any comments they make to the press formally or informally could prejudice that relationship, and I very much doubt if that would be in their best interests.
If you put yourself in the position of the NTSB, the investigation isn't over until it's over. Anything they say can and will be used in evidence against any of the manufacturers or maintenance people or the airline. If they make an interim statement which later turns out to be untrue then whoever cops for the law suit will be pretty pissed off with them. Even if they think they know what happened they can't say much until they've completed their investigation incase something crops up that they hadn't considered. If they rule out everything that we know they're investigating other than one thing then that's a bit of a giveaway.