I think the idea that "elite" developers can write bug-free C (or even just network-facing C free of security-sensitive memory safety problems) is pretty well refuted at this point. Now you can write bug-free C if you're willing to spend enormous time and money on testing: this is to a first approximation what SQLite did. But that only makes economic sense for a small minority of projects. Just putting "elite" developers on a C project, without the huge verification cost, is by itself not enough to eliminate bugs, as much as we as hackers would like to think it is.

(The one exception may be, like, DJB. But djbdns/qmail are very unusual C programs in many ways.)