In Senate testimony last month, Mr. Lehnert, who retired as a major general, called the enterprise he had set up misguided, at odds with U.S. values. He urged that it be closed.
Mr. McCoy, 47 and now a photographer for the U.S. Marshals Service, recalled that day as a long one. He had split the duties with another Navy photographer, and with a coin toss ended up documenting the men awaiting registration in a makeshift, open-air holding compound.
He chose about 100 images, wrote captions and sent them to Washington.
At the Pentagon about a week later, news organizations were clamoring for transparency at the nascent detention operation in Cuba. Grainy, night-vision news footage had been broadcast from Afghanistan showing U.S. soldiers leading prisoners in rags, with bags on their head.
“The challenge was that the Geneva Conventions specifically prohibit holding detainees up to public ridicule or humiliation,” Victoria Clarke, Mr. Rumsfeld’s spokeswoman, wrote in her 2006 memoir, “Lipstick on a Pig.” To “allay some of our critics,” she obtained permission and released five photos.
People in the Pentagon saw a portrayal of safely held, anonymous prisoners that met Geneva Conventions obligations to protect prisoners against “public curiosity.”
Out in the world, the imagery struck some people as cruel. They saw degradation, sensory deprivation and subjugation.
“Did I ever misread what was in those photos,” Ms. Clarke wrote. “Instead of showing the care and concern with which we treated the detainees, the photos served as high-octane fuel for our critics and doubters.”