As a slightly different take on this, a pervasive rumour in the pen computing circles is that one of the reasons Jobs killed the Newton was that the USMC had just had a very successful test of the Newton MessagePad and some sort of wireless communication system and was looking to get Apple registered as a defense contractor so that they could implement them service-wide.

Unfortunately, this story was playing out in _Pen Computing Magazine_ and so forth, which doesn't seem to have a digitized/searchable archive --- anyone have any links or insights?