"After speaking with many of those involved and examining previously classified British and German documents in detail, SPIEGEL has concluded that there was no doubt that the West did everything it could to give the Soviets the impression that NATO membership was out of the question for countries like Poland, Hungary or Czechoslovakia."
I mean, if you fail to distinguish “giving an impression of current intention based on the current geopolitical context” with “making a binding, heritable commitment”, sure.
But you’d have to be incredibly dishonest to present something that explicitly describes the former as showing the latter.
Especially when the article you cite also says that the Soviets chose not to seek a binding commitment largely because they could not imagine a situation coming into existence where it would matter, given the then-current continued existence of the Warsaw Pact, and that the Western powers were disclaiming immediate intentions but in their own discussions had deferred anything longer term. So, in short, its clear that the USSR didn’t imagine the need for a long term commitment and didn’t seek one, and that the West would not have been prepared to offer one, and so no agreement incorporating such a commitment was discussed or made, verbally or otherwise.
"After speaking with many of those involved and examining previously classified British and German documents in detail, SPIEGEL has concluded that there was no doubt that the West did everything it could to give the Soviets the impression that NATO membership was out of the question for countries like Poland, Hungary or Czechoslovakia."