In the photograph that was widely published, the image of the shuttle trail is sharp.

How do you explain a "tripod wobble" that produces an "artifact" in one section of the film and a sharp image in the rest of the film?

These images were not long "time lapse" photography. A shuttle would transit the field of view in a fraction of a second.

Also, this image is in the middle of a sequence of images taken from a system that routinely tracks shuttle re-entry. So any wobble would have appeared in earlier images as well. Yet those images are also sharply defined.

In addition, Lawrence Livermore Laboratories has reported that its infra-sound detection system (used to monitor nuclear explosions) recorded the characteristic sound of a sprite (megalightening) at the precise time shown in the images date/time stamp?

I don't believe there was a "conspiracy", but I do believe that the photographic and acoustic evidence of a sprite hitting the shuttle has been dismissed without a through evaluation.

Most likely this is due to lack of expertise of the panel (nobody on the panel was a specialist in high energy atmospheric dischages).