Legit reason: Chain of evidence. They can’t bring in an outside expert that hasn’t been vetted, and they especially can’t use equipment that has been outside their control and hasn’t been verified intact. Damn near zero youtubers would pass NSA vetting, which clearly rules out their equipment as well. The fact this is such an outdated tech means there’s no verified-trustworthy experts within or contracted with the government that can work with it, so they really are stuck not being able to do anything with this tech in house. Digital obsolescence is a very serious problem, especially in government (why do you think they pay so much for COBOL developers?) and this truly is a nontrivial issue to overcome.

… Which is the bureaucratic legitimacy behind this claim. Obviously they could fix this, I mean duh. But it’s an actual hassle, and they see no benefit to going through it to reveal something they don’t see a point to revealing. So they just hide behind the legit issues, shrug, and know we can’t do anything about it.