No, those words are the author's, Otto Kreisher and amount to paraphrasing since they were not in quotes or directly attributed.
The general only stated that the article "was superb" and When she brought up the point about the inability to recycle. I went back to my folks and said, we got to fix this. So we are,
For her part, Santangelo did not question the standards, only the equality of opportunity to meet those standards.
Naturally Santangelo isn't going to question the standards, it would be bad form, but if a sufficient number of females can't meet the standard then......
Perhaps the standards aren't necessary.