Former senior CIA analysts testified before a Senate Committee of the USA that during the 1980s the CIA was highly politicized to the point that intelligence estimates (notably on Iran, Nicaragua and Afghanistan) were deliberately slanted and false information was presented to the presidency to match the policy objectives of the agency's director. The influence of the former USSR in Iran was, for example, overstated at a time when the sale of USA arms were being justified as a counterbalance to the Soviet influence there. In 1993 it was discovered that Sisde, the Italian civilian secret service agency, maintained an illegal fund to pay off politicians (allegedly including successive interior ministers and the president), journalists and senior state officials In 1994, following the discovery of a high-level double agent within the CIA, steps were taken to compel all employees to make annual financial disclosure statements.