“These men should not be used as scapegoats in the current bout of U.S. partisan politics,” the lawyers said, adding, “Time is not on our side.”

The letter was addressed to Mr. Hagel; Cliff Sloan and Paul M. Lewis, detainee transfer envoys at the State and Defense Departments; and three top national security officials at the White House, Susan E. Rice, Lisa O. Monaco and Stephen Pomper.

Also this week, the judge overseeing the case against Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri, a Saudi accused of planning the 2000 bombing of the American destroyer Cole, issued a new order in a dispute over how much information the government must turn over about the C.I.A.’s treatment of Mr. Nashiri.

Mr. Nashiri’s lawyer, Richard Kammen — along with lawyers in the cases of Khalid Shaikh Mohammed and four other high-level detainees, all accused of aiding the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks — are seeking the information because they plan to argue that the government should not be allowed to execute their clients because the C.I.A. tortured them.

The government does not want to disclose the countries that hosted prisons or the personnel involved. In April, the judge, Col. James L. Pohl of the Army, ordered the government to turn over sweeping details to Mr. Nashiri’s lawyer, who has a security clearance, but prosecutors asked him to reconsider.

In his new order, which is not yet public but was described by several people who read it, Colonel Pohl reiterated that the details from his original order must be disclosed, but said they would go through a process to substitute summaries for the raw information in order to protect classified material.

It was not clear what that meant. Defense lawyers claimed victory, saying that they would get the raw information and that the substitution process was to determine what they could show their clients and use in open court. But Mr. Kammen said prosecutors had indicated that they thought the substitution process came first and defense lawyers would see only the summaries. “There will be many, many months of litigation over all of this, and a trial is not anywhere close,” he said. “If anything, we moved further away from trial.”