BRITAIN: As the inquiry into the naming of Dr David Kelly continues, several key players in the controversy can expect to face more tough questions, writesFrank Millar, London Editor
"It must be terrible for that poor man's family." Stepping outside the Westminster village, this seems the commonplace response to the unfolding drama of the Hutton Inquiry. Understandably so.
Politicians and journalists inevitably weigh each day's evidence in calculation of likely cost to ministerial and professional reputations and careers.
"He's toast," was the instant verdict of many colleagues last week following BBC journalist Mr Andrew Gilligan's cross-examination.
And it is not just press cynics who think Secretary of State for Defence Mr Geoff Hoon (who makes his second appearance at the inquiry this morning) remains in the cabinet only because he is Downing Street's intended sacrifice following Lord Hutton's report.
It was hard to watch Mr Gilligan and not to feel some sympathy for him, even as he admitted a series of crucial errors in the compilation and broadcast of his original claim - that Downing Street and the Prime Minister's outgoing director of communications, Mr Alastair Campbell, inserted questionable intelligence in the Iraqi weapons dossier against the wishes of the intelligence services and probably knowing it to be wrong.
Mr Blair was right to say there could be no more serious charge than that he took the country to war - and sent young service men and women to their deaths - on the basis of a lie. If proven to be so, the prime minister would indeed have had to resign.
And the government will feel none of the mercy exhibited by counsel for the Kelly family last week as Mr Gilligan now finds himself accused of "sexing up" his conversations with the government weapons expert David Kelly.
Yet few journalists would wish to find themselves subjected to the unimaginable degree of scrutiny that inevitably followed in the wake of Dr Kelly's apparent suicide. There was also something distasteful in the spectacle of the BBC's director of news, Mr Richard Sambrook, hanging his reporter out to dry.
The entire BBC hierarchy, after all, went in to battle on Mr Gilligan's behalf without first investigating the facts - an elementary step that should have enabled the news corporation to have corrected its mistakes and defused the war of words with Number 10 that would have such disastrous consequences for Dr Kelly.
In words that will haunt Mr Gilligan, Mr Sambrook described the Today programme's defence correspondent as someone who cast his reports in "primary colours" but failed to appreciate the "nuances and subtleties" of broadcast journalism. Yet Mr Sambrook and his colleagues hardly deployed shades of grey as they continued to assert that Mr Gilligan's source had been a member of the intelligence services. Last Wednesday, Mr Sambrook and Mr Gilligan finally accepted that Dr Kelly was not, and had never represented himself as such.
It was incredible for Mr Gilligan to describe his original assertion - that the government probably knew the claim about Iraq's capacity to deploy weapons of mass destruction at 45-minutes notice was wrong, even before they decided to put it in the dossier - as a "slip of the tongue". Yet, it was more incredible still that BBC managers failed to establish and correct deficiencies and inaccuracies in Mr Gilligan's story, thus handing a powerful weapon to those lining up to question the very survival of the BBC as a public-service broadcaster financed by the licence fee.
Mr Hoon probably cuts an even less sympathetic figure than Mr Gilligan. If his original evidence is to be believed, Mr Hoon did everything possible to protect Dr Kelly's identity and personally believed he should only have been identified as the suspected government mole once the BBC had confirmed that he was its source.
This prompted suggestions that Mr Hoon should lose his job if only because crucial decisions about and within his ministry were being taken without reference to him. As one headline demanded at the time: "What is Hoon for?"
However, Mr Hoon's personal adviser has told the inquiry that Mr Hoon was present at a meeting at which the so-called "naming strategy" - by which the Ministry of Defence (MoD) would confirm Dr Kelly's name to any journalist who came up with it - was discussed.
And if the BBC had a rough ride last week, Mr Hoon and Mr Campbell can expect tough questions about the naming strategy and the question clearly exercising Lord Hutton concerning the government's "duty of care" to Dr Kelly.
Opening this second and final phase last Monday, Mr James Dingemans QC made it clear that he would be pursuing the question of the naming strategy; whether Dr Kelly had been advised of it and agreed to it; and whether there was an attempt in government circles to play down Dr Kelly's importance as a civil servant and his role in the production of the dossier, as part of its battle with the BBC?
Mr Campbell - cleared by the head of MI6 and by the chairman of the Joint Intelligence Committee of the "sexing up" charge - will be asked whether he was responsible for a press briefing given by the prime minister's official spokesman, Mr Tom Kelly, seen to have assisted journalists in the question-and-answer process the Kelly family's lawyer last week likened to a game of "Russian roulette".
Mr Campbell will also be asked about the evidence from the other official spokesman, Mr Godric Smith, that he (Campbell) had originally favoured leaking Dr Kelly's name to a friendly newspaper. In his original evidence, Mr Campbell distanced himself from the MoD strategy and suggested it would have better to have named Dr Kelly in a straightforward manner. This candour confirmed that the government originally thought it had a perfectly proper case for identifying Dr Kelly - not least because he told his line managers he could not have been the primary source for Mr Gilligan's original broadcast.
There was a strong sense of this again last week from Mr Richard Hatfield, the MoD's personnel director, who told the inquiry that Dr Kelly was entirely responsible for his public exposure; that he had felt under no obligation to tell Dr Kelly about the question-and-answer briefing containing details about him; and that he would have been "forced to suspend" him had he known what Dr Kelly had disclosed to the media.
We cannot know Lord Hutton's thinking, although it would be surprising if he was persuaded by Mr Hatfield's assertion that the support provided for Dr Kelly was "outstanding". That said, Mr Hatfield's robust performance otherwise carried the strong flavour of the truth about the government's disposition toward Dr Kelly prior to his death.
The problem for the government is that it has not told a consistent story. In July, during his Far East trip, Mr Blair categorically denied authorising the leak of Dr Kelly's name and insisted the government had acted entirely properly. The tacit (if unintended) implication was that to have leaked his name would have been improper and, of course, the government continues to insist that it did not "leak" Dr Kelly's name.
However, if Lord Hutton fails to grasp Number 10's fine distinction between a naming strategy and "a leak strategy", it is hard to see how any criticisms he might wish to make would stop at the door of Mr Hoon and the MoD.