Thanks... that's more that I had known existed.
I had never even heard that there was any controversy at all... you were the first person to mention it to me... and I served in the USMC air wing from 1981-1989, and was following the investigation as fully as I could.
I was very interested in the details of the T-bird crash, as I had been at the airshow where the previous T-bird fatal crash occurred... Captain David "Nick" Hauck at Hill AFB 9 May 1981 (a year after I graduated high school, and less than a month before I reported to USMC boot camp).
I have seen accounts of Hauk's crash on-line that were very wrong... significantly different from what I saw on the day, as well as what was uncovered on a day-to-day basis in the local media.
One recent on-line report claimed that he had stalled and lost flight lift, crashing into the ground in an uncontrolled manner.
The USAF released a transcript of the conversation between him and the tower & flight lead, discussing his loss of engine power and that he didn't feel he could clear the cars on the road across the end of the runway just outside the base fence, so he was going to try a belly landing short of the runway.
This matched hundreds of eye-witness accounts of the aircraft being fully under control as he set it down in a field between a sub-division and the rise in the ground below the road at the south end of the runway... only to catch a wingtip on an obstruction, causing the aircraft to roll and catch fire.
So while I grant this is something tending to lend credence to your contention, it is hardly conclusive... I shall try to find the AvWeek article you mention (I have access to a library with an archive of the physical magazines from that time period).