The presentation makes it seem they are harvesting the data. That would resolve any apparent contradiction. The biggest question is how? Surely google has noticed these man in the middle attacks. I think the guardian misinterpreted the word "provider". Edit: it appears the NSA has google's ssl keys. That would explain all the talk about "direct access".
Google could not provide the NSA with its TLS keys and then argue it hadn't given the government direct access to its servers. Nor could the government MITM TLS, which would be detectable, nor could they have compromised a TLS CA to accomplish the same thing, because Google's keys are pinned in Chrome and recent Firefox; you can examine the builds to see that.
Sure it could. First, it would be accurate: TLS keys give you the ability to decrypt communications, which is distinct from direct access to the servers (though, obviously, it can easily substitute for it.) Second, even if it wasn't an accurate distinction, people can (and do) argue positions on unsound bases, and Google doesn't seem to be especially incapacitated in that regard.