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there is no reason to "keep the existence of the program secret."

Actually, there is. Do you remember the uproar from the intelligence community when President Carter showed satellite imagery in a press conference? As a result, certain Foreign Powers took steps to protect their assets from detection by satellite imagery...

[If the current NSA activity is clearly withing FISA] there is no reason to "keep the existence of the program secret."

Not clearly - but that example points out the loss of data due to disclosing a specific capability, rather than loss of data due to disclosing policy.

My point was that the existence of surveillance within the policy confines of FISA need not be kept secret - in fact it isn't secret. But President Bush seemed to object to the disclosure of a surveillance policy on national security grounds. That's a signal that the surveillance is outside of the policy boundary of FISA.

None of the NYT article described HOW the intercepts take place, or where, etc., nor does the content of the articles facilitate a determination of the technical interception capability. Carter's photo, OTOH, caused somebody to learn about a technical capability that they didn't know we had.