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(April 16) -- The former head of the CIA, Porter Goss, approved of a decision by a top aide in 2005 to destroy videotapes showing two terror suspects being waterboarded, internal intelligence agency e-mails show.

Goss, who has testified to a grand jury as part of a continuing Justice Department criminal investigation involving the tapes, was not aware that Jose A. Rodriguez Jr. had ordered their destruction.

But after he was told, Goss said he agreed with the decision and joked that he would be the person who "would take the heat," a CIA e-mail showed.

The e-mails, released late Thursday as a result of a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit filed by the American Civil Liberties Union, show that Rodriguez was concerned that the 92 tapes would be "devastating" to the CIA if they got out.

The tapes show CIA agents interrogating two al-Qaida suspects being secretly held in Bangkok in 2002, The New York Times reported. Rodriguez told Goss he felt it was "extremely important" they be destroyed, because it would make the CIA "look terrible."

The e-mails also show that Harriet Miers, the Bush administration's White House counsel, was "livid" after she was told by the CIA's top lawyer, John Rizzo, that the tapes had been destroyed.

According to The Associated Press, both Alberto Gonzales, who preceded Miers in the White House, and Vice President Dick Cheney's chief of staff, David Addington, had told the CIA in 2004 that the tapes should not be destroyed.

The waterboarding techniques -- a form of simulated drowning that has been widely condemned as torture -- shown being used in the tapes did not follow those approved by the Bush administration, the documents released indicate.

"These documents provide further evidence that senior CIA officials were willing to risk being prosecuted for obstruction of justice in order to avoid being prosecuted for torture," an ACLU lawyer, Ben Wizner, told the AP. "If the Department of Justice fails to hold these officials accountable, they will have succeeded in their cover-up."

In an interview with the Times, Rizzo said, "Porter never once indicated to me that he agreed with the decision," adding, "I thought he was as upset as I was for not being told."

The Justice Department investigation into the tapes' destruction has been going on for more than two years.