Beyond charges that he hid the truth about the Iran-Contra affair from Congress when that scandal was breaking in the 1980s, Gates in 1991 overcame potentially disqualifying claims that he skewed intelligence reports in the 1980s to suit the Reagan administration's hardline anti-Soviet views.

[Manucher] Ghorbanifar and his creditors, including Adnan Khashoggi, arpear determined to recoup their "losses," even at the risk of exposing US covert arms shipments in exchange for release of our hostage.

We have a festering sore for which no treatment has been prescribed. ...

Ghorbanifar claims to have secreted, for "insurance purposes, documentation of events which have transpired so far.

Given this, the major elements of this initiative are likely to be exposed soon unless remedial action is taken. There is no indication that the White House has a plan to prevent the exposure or a plan to deal with the potential exposure. ...

Ghorbanifar is depressed and claims his financial situation has been damaged. On several occasions, he has said he would not sit idly by and permit himself to be made the "fall guy" in this matter. He claims to have given written accounts of all that has transpired to several persons in America and Europe. He has directed these individuals to make this material available to the press in the event that "something bad" befalls him. ...

We face a disaster of major proportions in our efforts with Iran despite the apparent promise of the Hakim-[deleted] channel. Too many know too much, and exposure, at a minimum, would damage the new channel badly, perhaps fatally. ...

[Ghorbanifar would reveal that] the Government of the United States, along with the Government of Israel, acquired a substantial profit from these transactions, some of which profit was redistributed to other projects of the US and of Israel [i.e., the contra war]. (my emphasis)

Yet enough had come out in the inner circles of the CIA in those seven days [Oct. 7-15, 1986] so that the crisis might well have taken a different turn. North and Poindexter had been questioned superficially but had never been pressed for answers to the hard questions. It was enough for Gates that Allen's memorandum had not specifically implicated someone in the U.S. government in the diversion to excuse not raising the question at all. Allen had previously spoken to Gates about a possible diversion in a way that had clearly implicated U.S. government personnel, and even his memorandum had implicated the "White House" in the entire operation. As Gates recalled the episode, Casey acted as if he knew nothing about the diversion, even though, if we can believe North, Casey had been enthusiastic about it and had approved it. According to Gates, Casey had risked blowing the whole thing wide open by making the entire affair public and by asking the White House counsel to review it. According to North, Casey had already told him to hide the evidence by cleaning up his files. (my emphasis)

Charges that Robert Gates had politicized intelligence took center stage when confirmation hearings opened in September. At first an extended examination of the nominee was not planned. Marvin C. Ott, deputy director of the SSCI [Senate Select Committee on Intelligence] staff at the time, recalls that the predisposition to let Gates sail through created a staff presumption that there was nothing to look into. Committee staff and members were flummoxed by the appearance of a succession of analysts who gave chapter and verse on many Gates interventions in intelligence analysis. Reports on Afghanistan and Nicaragua were among those cited. Evidence emerged that current employees, reluctant to criticize openly, also saw Gates as an interventionist. Far from pro forma nomination hearings, those on Gates morphed into a major CIA inquiry.

The nominee presented a preemptive defense, attempting to disarm critics with examples of how he had simply tried to push analysts to back up their assertions, picturing some alleged interventions as his effort to tease out better reporting. Then a number of former analysts went before the committee to dispute that rendering, most notably Mel Goodman, who had been a colleague for years; Jennifer L. Glaudemans, a former Soviet analyst; and Harold P. Ford, one of the CIA's grand old men.