British Defence Secretary Geoff Hoon will have a tough time when the Hutton inquiry sits again, writes Frank Millar, London Editor
Just when perhaps he thought to have escaped, the final session of phase one of the Hutton inquiry found the British Defence Secretary back in the dock. "High noon for embattled Hoon", proclaimed one headline yesterday after his special adviser revealed that Geoff Hoon had failed to disclose details of a meeting at which he approved the strategy which led to the public exposure of Dr David Kelly.
The near certainty is that Hoon will be among those witnesses recalled for further and more rigorous examination during the second stage of the inquiry into the circumstances leading to the death of the former government scientist and highly-esteemed expert on Iraq's weapons of mass destruction.
The accompanying conviction among Westminster insiders and observers is that Hoon remains the most likely cabinet casualty following the publication of Lord Hutton's report.
By his own previous account Hoon appeared to have sealed his fate, if only on the grounds of his astonishing buck-passing defence: that he was not involved in any of the discussions leading to the public grilling and sense of humilation and betrayal which preceded Dr Kelly's presumed suicide.
In evidence last week Hoon insisted the key decisions were taken inside Number 10, suggesting he was only vaguely aware of the now-notorious game of questions and answers by which his press office agreed to confirm Dr Kelly as the source of the BBC's "sexed-up" allegations about the Iraqi weapons dossier if journalists came up with his name.
Specifically Hoon maintained he had at all times followed proper MoD procedures and sought to protect Dr Kelly's anonymity. Surprisingly, Hoon said he believed Dr Kelly should only be identified once it was clear that he had in fact been the source for journalist Andrew Gilligan's story, and that he had only been satisfied of this after Dr Kelly's death and the BBC's subsequent confirmation.
On Thursday, however, Hoon's adviser, Richard Taylor, told the inquiry his boss had in fact chaired a meeting at which the decision to confirm Dr Kelly's name to journalists was made. Taylor also said that the weapons expert was never informed that his name would be made public in this way.
This would indeed appear to deal Hoon a fatal blow.
While he himself has cautioned that no conclusions should be drawn from any particular line of questioning, Lord Hutton has clearly been exercised by the question of the government's duty of care to a civil servant who had admitted giving unauthorised briefings to journalists. Having come clean, and having insisted he could not have been the primary source for Gilligan's claim - that Alastair Campbell and Number 10 inserted the disputed claim about Iraq's capacity to deploy weapons of mass destruction at 45 minutes' notice, against the wishes of the intelligence services, and probably knowing it to be wrong - why was it necessary to name him at all? And having decided to name him, did any of his line managers give even passing thought as to how he would cope under the glare of media and parliamentary scrutiny? However, if Hoon has failed to make full disclosure to the inquiry and is once more in the frame, these questions also lead us back to Number 10 and the office of the Prime Minister. For we now know that Blair decided early on that Dr Kelly would have to face the Select Committee and was at least aware of the decision-making process which led to his public exposure.
In his evidence Blair reasonably explained that he feared accusations of a cover-up had the government decided not to disclose Dr Kelly's admission about his meeting with Mr Gilligan. Mr Blair was also at his most compelling when he again explained that the "sexed-up" allegations were of sufficient seriousness to merit his resignation had they been proven to be correct.
But there was something deeply unconvincing about Blair's nonchalant assertion that the name would have come out in any event. By the time he took the witness stand at the High Court we had already learned that the government felt it had a very good case for putting Dr Kelly upfront in a direct (as they thought it would prove) repudiation of the BBC.
Indeed during his evidence Alastair Campbell - Blair's departing communications director - criticised the MoD strategy and suggested it would have been far better to have named Dr Kelly in an open and straightforward manner.
This image of the communications director as plain dealer was swiftly shattered when his civil servant deputy informed the inquiry that Campbell himself had favoured leaking Dr Kelly's name to a friendly newspaper - thus reinforcing the impression that, in naming the BBC's mole, the government knew itself to be engaged in something rather disreputable or inappropriate.
Many observers are agreed it was in fact nothing of the sort. Blair was right about the nature of the original BBC allegation - that he had in effect taken the country to war, and sent young servicemen and women to their deaths, on the basis of a lie.
Acquitted of the charge by the heads of the intelligence services, it was inevitable the government would seek to identify the BBC's source and force the broadcasting corporation to retract. When Dr Kelly admitted his Gilligan contact - but denied that he could have been the primary source for Gilligan's story, thus implying that it was the journalist himself who did the sexing-up - Downing Street sensed victory in a battle with the BBC which had seriously undermined public trust in the prime minister and his government.
So why the continuing government evasions and denials? One possible explanation is that they simply panicked.
Certainly in the immediate aftermath of Dr Kelly's death government insiders were clear that naming Dr Kelly had been entirely in order. Yet on his flight from Tokyo on July 22nd Blair emphatically denied authorising the leak of Dr Kelly's name and said he believed the government had acted properly at all times. The tacit admission seemed to be that leaking Dr Kelly's name would not in fact have been proper.
And the next day's headlines bore out that initial interpretation, concluding that Blair had thus raised fresh questions about the survival of Campbell and Hoon.
On the day in question Blair was still reeling from that demand, "Have you blood on your hands? Will you resign?" He would have instinctively grasped that the judgment of many people would forever be coloured and informed by the fact of Dr Kelly's tragic and lonely death. Yet his assertion of innocence then has come back to haunt him and seems to sit uncomfortably alongside his evidence to the Hutton inquiry.
Unlike Hoon, Blair accepted his overall responsibility for decisions taken. This has prompted some commentators to suggest the prime minister might have to go, should Lord Hutton find the leak strategy a contributory factor in Dr Kelly's presumed suicide.
However, if that is somewhat fanciful - and the expectation remains for blame to be widely distributed between the government, a deeply embarrassed BBC and a somewhat discredited Andrew Gilligan - the first stage of this inquiry has concluded leaving Blair and his colleagues with questions still to answer.
The irony is that nothing adduced thus far has seriously challenged the case for the war in Iraq. Rather it is this government's obsession with presentation and spin, and its reputation for economy with truth, which inclines so many of the British people to think otherwise.