My suspicious nature suspects that is more likely.
"We have no evidence" - pure bs and speculation. Yes a trained operator could damage a lot of kinds of hardware with a Barrett or other .50 rifle. Does it make any sense (given the range of tools with which have to apply to solving this problem) to use a sniper to ruin the Norks launch? No. Option 1) this is filler (slow news day at the Washington Times?) or option 2) deliberate misinformation.