One risk of putting career intelligence officer Robert Gates in charge of the Defense Department is that he has a secret - and controversial - history that might open him to pressure from foreign operatives, including some living in countries of U.S. military interest, such as Iran and Iraq.

Put more crudely, the 63-year-old Gates could become the target of pressure or even blackmail unless some of the troubling questions about his past are answered conclusively, not just cosmetically.

In the 1980s and 1990s, Gates benefited from half-hearted probes by the U.S. Congress and the Executive Branch into these mysteries. The investigators - some of whom were Gates’s friends - acted as if their goal was more to sweep incriminating evidence under the rug than to expose the facts to public scrutiny.

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