Bagram has operated in rigorous secrecy since it opened in 2002. It bars outside visitors except for the International Red Cross and refuses to make public the names of those held there. The prison may not be photographed, even from a distance.

From the accounts of former detainees, military officials and soldiers who served there, a picture emerges of a place that is in many ways rougher and more bleak than its counterpart in Cuba. Men are held by the dozen in large wire cages, the detainees and military sources said, sleeping on the floor on foam mats and, until about a year ago, often using plastic buckets for latrines. Before recent renovations, they rarely saw daylight except for brief visits to a small exercise yard.

The Times reports that the Bush administration decided in September 2004 to stop sending new detainees to Guantánamo to circumvent possible judicial review of their detentions. Until then, Bagram had been a clearinghouse where detainees were interrogated before they were transferred or released. With no new transfers to Guantánamo, detainees have been bottled up in Bagram. The decision not to house new prisoners at Guantánamo explains this report of U.S. plans to build a high security prison in Afghanistan.

The Times also tells us that some detainees are caught in the middle of a dispute between the CIA and the Pentagon.

Defense Department officials said the C.I.A.'s effort to unload some detainees from its so-called black sites had provoked tension among some officials at the Pentagon, who have frequently objected to taking responsibility for terror suspects cast off by the intelligence agency. The Defense Department "doesn't want to be the dumping ground," one senior official familiar with the interagency debates said. "There just aren't any good options."