Smile,
I read the article you suggested from the San Francisco Chronicle. It says that Bush avoided the FISA court because the aministration felt that it wouldn't be able to get "probable cause" for surveillance of many of the citizens they wanted to spy on.

These quotes sum up the article:

"Bamford, 59, a Vietnam-era Navy veteran, likens the Bush administration's domestic surveillance without court approval to Nixon-era abuses of intelligence agencies..."NSA prides itself on learning the lessons of the 1970s and obeying the legal restrictions imposed by FISA," Bamford said. "Now it looks like we're going back to the bad old days again."