I don’t think they helped overall, I’d agree on net they acted to make things less secure by arguing for the small key sizes. We mostly agree. I just think strengthening public DES based on a security issue that was not public at the time is an interesting example of a time they did the opposite of inserting a backdoor, people were afraid their suggestions were weakening DES, but they were strengthening it. That paired with the history suggested some internal arguing about priorities.