Couric — who once was an NBC News Pentagon correspondent, and traveled to Iraq and Afghanistan with Gates for CBS’s “60 Minutes” when he was Defense secretary — said in a telephone interview that she wanted to talk to him about “politics, personalities and policy.”

“What could be better than that?” she said with her contagious enthusiasm. “It’s fun for me to get back to some of the harder news that I’ve done for most of my career. … I was pretty surprised by some of his revelations – things he had kept close to the vest.”

( From POLITICO Magazine: The Pentagon’s grumpy old man)

Couric conducted the Gates interview without advance fanfare. Her role at Yahoo is still evolving, and she is still discussing her formal launch. But she took this opportunity after she read about Gates’s book and reached out to his team.

Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer said in November when she announced the buzzy hire: “Katie will lead a growing team of correspondents at Yahoo News who will cover the world’s most interesting stories and newsmakers.”

Couric is doing double duty through June, continuing to host her syndicated daytime show, “Katie,” which will end after its second season. The Yahoo outlet gave her the opportunity to do a harder interview than is typical for daytime fare. Couric has long been a platform pioneer, turning out a weekly “@KatieCouric” web show when she was anchoring the “CBS Evening News.”

( WATCH: Robert Gates: Memoir message ‘hijacked’)

Last week, Couric flew to Las Vegas for the Consumer Electronics Show, where she was introduced by Mayer as part of a presentation about Yahoo’s new digital content. As part of its ongoing news expansion, Yahoo recently hired technology writer David Pogue and political writer Matt Bai from The New York Times.

Couric said she has found Yahoo to be full of “really smart people who are interested in really good, creative content.

“What’s I’m learning is that everything is possible,” she said. “It almost feels like a start-up, but with a very established distribution platform. So it’s the best of both worlds. … It’s a very exciting time for our business, with all the things that are being reimagined.”