Camera Wobble or Mega-lighting

Check this article out. It shows a picture I had heard about when the Columbia Space Shuttle broke apart on reentry. It was taken by a San Francisco amateur astronomer.

“...But NASA officials seized both the camera and the photograph itself, prohibiting the San Francisco Chronicle from publishing it after the newspaper had received the picture.
Most shocking of all is the explanation given by experts who examined the photograph. They said that the luminous corkscrew trail was an "artefact" caused by a camera wobble. The explanation left critics aghast, since the Columbia trail in the photo is crisp with no evidence of camera movement. Nor is any wobble evident in other similar photographs taken by Goldie. The explanation relegates to "coincidence" the fact that the Columbia trail brightens precisely at its juncture with the corkscrew trail. This brightening is an electrically predictable occurrence when two plasma channels merge...”

So after all this time NASA finally releases the picture and attributes the photo to camera wobble. The author of the article concluded that it was Mega-lightning. Realiziing how things work in this world, I doubt if it was either.