> I suppose the reason NSA was delaying was they had to develop a workaround for the encryption
No. Their primary purpose was never to protect anybody else but their own operations (the concept "Nobody but us" is older and broader than Wikipedia currently knows https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NOBUS ) especially not "common citizens". The NSA is mainly a military institution. Had they been able to get by with nobody being allowed to use crypto but they, they would have done that and continue doing.