That's assuming that the Harvard officer referred exclusively to AP tests (or non-SAT's). Otherwise, there is an apparent contradiction with tokenadult's interpretation. If a link is posted to the thread of a few months ago, we can take a closer look. There is an ongoing thread to which I posted a day or two ago where the same issue came up with similar remarks from an admissions dean at Cornell.
Edit: here is the link to the other thread. The Cornell remarks are reported as unambiguously pertaining to SAT/ACT, as distinguished from further remarks of the same nature about AP.
SAT dilema