You can start from the C version and move forward and check that you get the same result as starting with released Go binaries.

Unless you think Ken somehow backdoored the original C compilers to backdoor every C compiler in the world to backdoor the Go compilers that came about decades later. :-)

Haven't read the article you linked to, but the Brian Kernighan talk it discusses is fantastic, one of my favorite reads in the field:

https://www.ece.cmu.edu/~ganger/712.fall02/papers/p761-thomp...