It is a paraphrasing by the article's authors. It is their take on the document.
Fortunately the article includes a link to a copy of the document. Published on documentcloud with a crappy user-interface it is a PITA to read it and I can't find a link to download as a PDF either. But at least you still have the option to read the original source yourself.
How did you get from the NYT inline widget to the PDF file? I didn't see any links from the NYT page to documentcloud itself -- the only reason I even knew it was documentcloud was because I had to whitelist it in RequestPolicy.
No idea what "RequestPolicy" is but the widget has DocumentCloud's name/logo (which links to their homepage), searching DocumentCloud for the title of the document SIGINT strategy[1] yields this as the first result and when you view it on DocumentCloud[2] (as opposed to the widget) it includes a link to the PDF.
It's actually a 'summation'. The context is far stronger than a simple re-wording (or paraphrase in the ordinary sense). I agree it begs for a deeper review of the original source. The lead in reads: Written as an agency mission statement with broad goals, the five-page document said that...
Fortunately the article includes a link to a copy of the document. Published on documentcloud with a crappy user-interface it is a PITA to read it and I can't find a link to download as a PDF either. But at least you still have the option to read the original source yourself.