I don't think people think that NSA doesn't have backdoor access in Linux. But I think there's a huge difference between the maintainers purposefully implement

I don't think people think that NSA doesn't have backdoor access in Linux. But I think there's a huge difference between the maintainers purposefully implemented a backdoor for the NSA, and the NSA found exploits to gain backdoor. Given that, what I'm more interested in is why Linus would say no when asked.