And you are free to take the opinion of a person who was NOT an eye witness, and was last on the mountain when Dwight Eisenhower was president.
I think I pretty much said the same thing, didn't I?
But you really don't believe the article writer was an eyewitness, do you? What else might Sir Edmund have meant by his comment? The reporter and maybe the editor only gave what they chose to report about what somebody else said they did or didn't do.