More likely would be that the NSA (or whoever) gave all the involved companies the same standard talking points, either in the past few hours/days or years ago

More likely would be that the NSA (or whoever) gave all the involved companies the same standard talking points, either in the past few hours/days or years ago when each company "joined" the program, and each company loosely paraphrased those same talking points. Having all the companies issue the same denial at the same time was probably not anticipated, so they didn't coordinate with each other to avoid sounding like they're all parroting the same talking points. I think that explanation strikes an appropriate balance of competence and incompetence.