The destruction was ordered by Jose A. Rodriguez Jr., who at the time was the head of the agency’s clandestine service. The officer was serving as Mr. Rodriguez’s chief of staff, and several former C.I.A. officers said she was a strong advocate for getting rid of the tapes, which had been sitting for years inside a safe in the agency’s station in Bangkok. “She and Jose were the two main drivers for years for getting the tapes destroyed,” said one former senior C.I.A. officer.

In his book, “Hard Measures: How Aggressive C.I.A. Actions After 9/11 Saved American Lives,” Mr. Rodriguez wrote that he had grown frustrated that the tapes might become public and expose the officers shown in them to jeopardy. The female officer held a meeting with agency lawyers, Mr. Rodriguez wrote, during which the officer was told that Mr. Rodriguez had authority to destroy the tapes. “My chief of staff drafted a cable approving the action that we had been trying to accomplish for so long,” Mr. Rodriguez wrote. “The cable left nothing to chance. It even told them how to get rid of the tapes.”

In addition to the female officer who is acting director, Mr. Brennan is considering several other candidates to run the clandestine service and has taken the unusual step of appointing three retired C.I.A. officers to advise him. Several former intelligence officials said they could not recall a similar situation when an agency director had formally enlisted an outside panel to advise him on a senior personnel decision, and suggested that Mr. Brennan may be looking for political cover in making the choice.

Preston Golson, a C.I.A. spokesman, said that was not the case. Mr. Brennan would make the final decision, he said, but “asking former senior agency officers to review the candidates will undoubtedly aid the selection process.” He said that the acting head of the clandestine service was a “strong candidate for the job,” but declined to provide any details of the officer’s biography.

As much as Mr. Brennan may want to put distance between the C.I.A. and its controversial past, he is also managing the spy agency’s formal response to a 6,000-page investigative report by the Senate Intelligence Committee. The report, which remains classified, is said to document a pattern of exaggerations and false statements by C.I.A. officers to the White House and Congress about the efficacy of the interrogation program.