It could have been a miscommunication at any point, from an incorrectly written draft to an official who misspoke. There’s nothing difficult at all in imagining that because those kinds of mistakes do happen.
Of course, alternatively, anybody can choose to believe that NBC is now part of some coverup.
Yeah, just last week I was on an email chain where a typo in a "white paper" almost (mis)informed a multi-million dollar decision and more than a few layoffs.
The paper had been proof read and vetted through "peer reviewed" before being sent up the chain. Passed upper managements sniff test, and was being used as decision criteria until some random PM on a call to work on the details of the resulting action caught the inconsistency between some of the data and the conclusions.. two incorrect words turned the whole thing on its side.