[stablechaos]

Wouldn't the most parsimonious explanation be that the NSA got spooked by "unknown unknowns"? You've got a lot of researchers working in private on cloak-and-dagger projects, no doubt some of them get paranoid in the same way the public cryptography community blew a seemingly innocuous statement out of proportion.

The article supports this notion, noting many times that the Snowden leaks, despite being extremely damaging and thus unlikely to be intentional, did not reveal a back door into ECC.