Were you yourself a Shuttle engineer, or are you quoting someone else? In any case, it's an incredible story which makes perfect sense, at least to me.
I was an engineer on the Shuttle Program for most of my career, but the real source was the guy from UT that I quoted.
A bit of my history:
After grad school I started at Northrop in Hawthorne. Got hired by Rockwell in Jan. 1983. I initially worked for Chuck Gould as a Payload Integration Engineer. This led to me supporting MIT Lincoln Labs when they flew the ground laser experiment illuminating the Shuttle from AMOS (Air Force Maui Optical Station) in 1984.
Later, I spent most of my career working under Larry Lewis in Advanced Engineering at Downey.
I worked on many SDI projects such as the venture with Los Alamos to fly a Neutral Particle Beam experiment on Shuttle. That ended when we realized that the astronauts would get a fatal dose of X-Rays if we fired the thing up!
Later, I was a Project Engineer on the Advanced Launch System and spent several years pursuing fed R&D money to supplement our IRAD funds.
I took early retirement in 2002 and have been an entrepreneur since then.
As for the bolt hole story, I was always too busy making a living to go pursue it further. However, I recently spoke to a writer who has published numerous books on the space program. Perhaps someone will take up the investigation.