It's possible, by some weird John Yoo-style contorted reading of the facts to say "FBI Director Comey said that, the US Government didn't say 'because terrorism'". That contorted reasoning would amount to lying by splitting hairs. Don't lie by splitting hairs.

If you're a programmer you'll understand - you can't argue generally about a class because of the properties of an instance of that class.

I see where you've gone astray: law is made on a case-by-case basis in the USA. The USA has a "common law" system (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_law) where precedent (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Precedent) is overwhelmingly important.

If I understand correctly, the FBI was attempting to set a precedent, using an instance that has lots of emotional appeal ("Terrorism!") and they were really working that emotional aspect ("Couldn't look the survivors in the eye") hard. Once that precedent is set, the USA's legal system would require some new laws to make the precedent go away (in a legal sense). The FBI could at the least operate under the legality of the precedent until the new law(s) take effect, if such new laws get made. They often don't, and the USA just rides on the precedent.

The San Bernardino litigation isn't about trying to set a precedent or send any kind of message... We simply want the chance, with a search warrant, to try to guess the terrorist's passcode without the phone essentially self-destructing and without it taking a decade to guess correctly. That's it. We don't want to break anyone's encryption or set a master key loose on the land.

https://www.lawfareblog.com/we-could-not-look-survivors-eye-...