At last! Proof of my sanity, if I ever should need it :)
Everything I'm proposing for Pre-IE seems to exist
elsewhere in eery detail.
For example, a precedent for a-Epenthesis exists apparently
in Modern Hebrew where an "e-epenthesis" occurs to
repair a potentially yucky series of THREE CONSONANT
PHONEMES (!!!) in some derivations.
http://www.phil-fak.uni-duesseldorf.de/~grafd/papers/manchester_handout_consonat_clusters.pdf
It's surprising how much eLIE and Modern Hebrew share similar
features as mentioned in that pdf actually! From a web
search, it would seem that Kissiberth dealt with this same
three-consonant-in-a-row yuckiness and a similar syncope
in Tonkawa in a paper published just after Woodstock.
= gLeN