Thanks for posting the video, F4.
Aviation History magazine had an article on the NF-104A project a couple of years ago. Basically the article said that the 'official' cause of the crash as stated in the video was what the then current secretary of defense ordered. The actual cause was that Yeager had failed to pay attention to the briefings he was given by pilots who had been flying the zoom profiles. Yeager was an excellent 'seat of the pants' pilot, but when the aircraft became ballistic, ie, a spacecraft due to lack of aerodynamic forces for the control surfaces to use, he lost his 'feel' for the plane and couldn't regain control with the reaction thrusters. If I recall he was never allowed to fly another NF-104A flight and this was basically the reason he was never considered for astronaut training in the Mercury program.