[MisterMashable]

In 2004 a whole layer of top CIA officials were forced out. Defense Secretary Colin Powell resigned. Dick Cheney purged the CIA of personnel who might have served as some counterbalancing force. Once the good and reasonable people were gone (fired, forced to resign etc.), the CIA ran amok. If we look honestly at what went wrong, it's pretty clear how to fix it. Fire all the people that lied to Congress and broke the law by employing prohibited techniques. Prosecute them to the fullest extent possible. Simultaneously, conduct an internal review of all the former CIA fired for political reasons and hire them back. These are the people America desperately needs to repair our broken system. The CIA is desperately in need of reform. The world is too dangerous and complicated a place to have the wrong people running our foreign policy. If they lied about torture, what else are they lying to Congress about? Clearly it isn't the solution to every problem but it would be the best possible, immediately actionable step. Bring back the good patriot Americans who were fired from their job with the intelligence agencies for political reasons. Get rid of and prosecute the bad apples.

[dragonwriter]

Colin Powell was never Defense Secretary, he was Secretary of State. In any case, as the report notes, the CIA was already running amok before 2004, so any purge then was not a necessary prerequisite for the CIA to run amok, though it might have removed a constraint that would have reigned things in sooner.