Oh yeah, I forgot to put in one of the best lines from that USA Today article about how the NSA's unwillingness to offer firmer legal justification for participating in the surveillance program left the Qwest lawyers so uneasy.  It goes something like this:

 The NSA's explanation did little to satisfy Qwest's lawyers. "They told (Qwest) they didn't want to do that because FISA might not agree with them," one person recalled. For similar reasons, this person said, NSA rejected Qwest's suggestion of getting a letter of authorization from the U.S. attorney general's office. A second person confirmed this version of events.

Yep, the NSA was afraid that neither the FISA courts or the Justice Department would say what they were doing was okay so they refused to go that route.  Really makes you feel confident about the whole venture doesn't it? 

I'm trying to figure out if the lesson to this sad tale is to keep massive government surveillance programs as secret as possible for as long as possible and then slowly watch embarrassing details slip out and hope nobody cares, or just be open about them from the get go?  Maybe its just that old adage that just because you have the capacity to do something doesn't always mean that you should... it'll be interesting to see what other surprises await?