With President Barack Obama pledging to empty the prison camps at Guantánamo, the man entrusted with the mission at Ground Zero is a fellow graduate of the president's Hawaii high school whose family has served a commander in chief for three generations.

Rear Adm. Thomas Copeman III took over Friday as the ninth commander of the detention and interrogation center that opened at the U.S. Navy base in Cuba in January 2002.

His father and grandfather served in the Navy before him, one in Vietnam, the other in World War II. Now, if the Pentagon executes the president's order to close the center by Jan. 22, Copeman will be the last commander.

''I think it is a historic mission and I am really proud to be able to be part of it,'' Copeman told The Miami Herald before relieving Rear Adm. David Thomas in Friday's ceremonies.

As it happens, Copeman was chosen for the assignment before Obama took office -- and before the president set a one-year deadline to empty the prison camps. The Navy's bureaucracy moves admirals around the globe like ships at sea. So Thomas, whom Copeman replaces, goes to Norfolk to take charge of an aircraft carrier strike group, a prestigious assignment.

Meantime, Copeman, a 27-year career naval officer, arrived at Guantánamo from an operations job with the Pacific Fleet in Hawaii.

CAMP DELTA

But Copeman's biography suggests a unique set of skills for the post:

As head of the so-called Joint Task Force-Guantánamo, he commands some 2,000 sailors and soldiers and civilians who work behind the razor wire at Camp Delta, which today confines some 230 long-held war-on-terror detainees.

He also plays a quasi-diplomatic role that squires distinguished visitors around the camps, such as members of Congress who oppose the president's closure order.

In 2005, Copeman was the Navy liaison to the Senate and accompanied Obama, then an Illinois senator, and Richard Lugar of Indiana, a veteran Republican on the Foreign Affairs Committee, on a disarmament trip through parts of the former Soviet Union.

There, the president-to-be and the future prison camps commander exchanged stories about their shared year, 1977, at the Punahou School, when Obama was a high school sophomore and Copeman was there for his senior year.

''We didn't play basketball together,'' the admiral said.

But they did spend time in Siberia in 2005 watching Russians demolish Soviet-era SS-25 missiles.

Lugar's office declined to comment on the aide's ascension. But Arizona Sen. John McCain, who also traveled with Copeman abroad, ''respects the job Rear Admiral Copeman has done in serving our country and wishes him the best of luck in his next endeavor,'' said McCain spokeswoman Brooke Buchanan.

Copeman takes charge at a critical time: The Obama administration is studying the files of the 229 captives spread across seven prison camps to decide who can be released, and who should face trials in federal court or by military commissions.

Even as the Justice Department instructs the Pentagon to send some detainees away, another Defense Department division is proceeding with sporadic hearings this summer at the war court at Guantánamo.

COMPLEX OF TENTS

Copeman's staff includes Air Force engineers and other support staff at Camp Justice, the crude military commissions complex of tents and temporary buildings arrayed on an abandoned air field.

In discussing his upcoming duties, Copeman said he had never before closed a military facility but said he would draw on facets of his career -- from an Army command course at Fort Leavenworth to his most recent stint as deputy chief of staff for operations and training for the Pacific Fleet.

Closure, he said, could be accomplished so long as everyone in government does his part.

''There's a tremendous amount of other pieces that have to come together,'' Copeman told The Miami Herald.

Copeman settled in this week for a one-year stay, and was joined by his wife and son in moving from Hawaii to southeast Cuba.

It won't be his first time there. As the chief engineer of a Navy cruiser in the 1980s, he trained off the coast and visited the base several times, he said.

Then, while serving as a Senate escort, he toured the camps several times. It was 2005 and he was accompanying congressional delegations on day trips from Washington, D.C., during a period when the Pentagon ran frequent shuttles in a bid to fend off charges of human rights abuse and promote the prison camps as a showcase detention center.

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