The Tor Project is primarily funded by the US State Department and DARPA [1], so it is a forgivable error if someone mistook TOR for FBI surveillance software.
"U.S. Department of State Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor The Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights and Labor leads the U.S. efforts to promote democracy, protect human rights and international religious freedom, and advance labor rights globally."
"DARPA's Resilient Anonymous Communication for Everyone (RACE) program researches technologies for a distributed messaging system that can: a) exist completely within a given network, b) provide confidentiality, integrity, and availability of messaging"
Both of those seem to align with Tor's goals of privacy and confidentiality.
It strikes me as cognitive dissonance that someone would simultaneously distrust the USG for obvious reasons (TFA is about Snowden), yet also think they are a perfectly noble arbiter of "secure communications", and look the other way when copious evidence suggests that the USG has means to compromise said "secure communications".
It's a very roundabout way of arguing "if you have nothing to hide, you have nothing to fear". TOR is a fine product if you aren't doing anything that the USG would realistically prosecute you for.
Occam's Razor says that TOR is primarily a tool of the USG for enabling intelligence & influence operations, particularly those involving low-level assets without clearances (e.g. color revolutions), and the stuff about "consumer privacy" is an unreliable side effect.