Do you have a source for that USMC trial and that “unspoken reason”?

I don’t remember any such thing at the time, and I can’t find any source for the claim.

If memory serves, the trial was covered in a sidebar in _Pen Computing Magazine_ as well as _The Marine Corps Times_, and the whole thing was discussed on comp.sys.newton a bit, with SJ not wanting to be a defense contractor being put forward as one reason among many (not profitable, not working well, bad publicity ("Eat up Martha"), pet project of Sculley, &c.)