I think the truth is still ambiguous. It's easy to write off that "statement" from Linus as a joke. Here, only that episode is referenced as the evidence. This

I think the truth is still ambiguous. It's easy to write off that "statement" from Linus as a joke. Here, only that episode is referenced as the evidence. This may well be intentional. If the NSA did indeed make the request, then Linus has sidestepped the issue by retaining his ability to claim that it was a joke. However, this ambiguity (intentional or not; truthful or not) does make the statement "NSA Asked Linux Torvalds to Install Backdoors" dubious at best. We still do not really know, since we do not know if that his previous statement was a joke or not. Just because somebody else is able to reference the same statement does not change this matter, even if this person is his father.