Later they said, "Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) authority" so maybe a dab of credibility restored?

This is a common practice in the industry. The FAA designates qualified individuals to do various tasks such as conducting exams for pilot certificates (Designated Pilot Examiner) or inspecting and declaring an aircraft design airworthy (Designated Airworthiness Representative) and people who check the engineering of parts for aircraft (Designated Engineering Representative) These people are trained by the FAA and authorized by the FAA to perform specific functions like an FAA inspector would. However, they don't work directly for the FAA and are not paid by the tax payers. Many work for themselves as independent contractors. For all but one of my airman certificates I used a DPE and paid them directly. People who build amateur built aircraft have the choice of requesting the aircraft be inspected by and have the airworthiness certificate issued directly by and FAA inspector. Which has no fee. But, can take months to get scheduled or, they can hire a DAR to do the same. All aircraft manufacturers hire DARs and DERs. If they didn't, no design would ever be certified in a timely manner.

The credibility was shot when it was written by aljazeera