ie, there's an alumni who now works at a top 5 lab in the field and is now looking for an opportunity to move back to his hometown (for whatever reasons). Job description was obviously written with someone within the institution in mind, but then this person shows up.
So, what did they do? Close the search without hiring anyone, then open a new search with the same job description, adding another skill that only the internal applicant has (I think it was fluency in Italian).
The moral of the story, if there is one, is to never underestimate the ability of people to get a desired result by exploiting the system in an unforeseen way (i.e. hacking). :)
Good to know what was really going with that now.