NEW YORK CITY ? Published reports that the U.S. was monitoring international banking transactions were not news to the terrorists who were its target because the Bush administration had already “talked openly” about the effort, The New York Times’ top editor said Sunday.

In defending his paper’s decision to reveal details of the program, Times executive editor Bill Keller told an interviewer on CBS’s “Face the Nation” that such operations are important to an informed public.

“I don’t think the threshold test of whether you write about how the government is waging the war on terror is whether they’ve done something that’s blatantly illegal or outrageous,” Keller said. “I think you probably would like to know what they’re doing that’s successful as well.”

Keller told CBS host Bob Scheiffer that “when lives are clearly at risk,” the Times often withholds information from publication.

“But this was a case where clearly the terrorists or the people who finance them know quite well, because the Treasury Department and the White House have talked openly about it, that they monitor international banking transactions. It’s not news to the terrorists,” he said.