I'm normally not the type to embark on wild conspiracy theories, but in this case I don't think the NSA actually believed it could push Speck into the ISO. The

I'm normally not the type to embark on wild conspiracy theories, but in this case I don't think the NSA actually believed it could push Speck into the ISO. The way Tomer depicts it, it sounds as if they almost wanted the process to fail; they made it a point to behave especially shadily. Perhaps, and here begins my wildy unfounded speculation, perhaps Speck was an attempt at setting a carefully crafted example of how the NSA pushes a compromised algorithm in an attempt to lower the expectations of shady NSA operations - thus making their next, real attempt more credible. But who knows.