The man obviously couldn't even imagine what it was all about - or it was all just part of his job as an external collaborator of some three-letter agency he went to visit along the way to give them a lecture on Bitcoin. As he himself later admits, this may have been the main trigger for Satoshi's disappearance.
If I remember correctly, he was not invited to the three-letter agency until two years after Satoshi disappeared. In any case, in addition to identifying the identity of the creator of Bitcoins, various agencies at that time had other concerns related to
BTC,
(I haven’t gone into the details of the timestamps, but it would be great if someone could find Gavin’s quote and match it with the date the Silk Road investigation began).