WHEN former Vice President Dick Cheney assailed President Obama’s plan to close the prison at Guantánamo last month, he used ammunition plucked right from that morning’s Times.

The top front-page headline that day, May 21, read: “1 in 7 Detainees Rejoined Jihad, Pentagon Finds.” The article reported in the first paragraph that an unreleased Pentagon study had concluded that about one in seven of the 534 prisoners already transferred abroad from Guantánamo had “returned to terrorism or militant activity.”

It was big news on a morning when Obama and Cheney would deliver dueling visions of how to keep the nation safe. “One in seven cut a straight path back to their prior line of work and have conducted murderous attacks in the Middle East,” Cheney said in a speech.