Rough new phase for Hutton probe

By Nick Assinder BBC News Online political correspondent

This is where the Hutton inquiry gets rough.

Key players at the heart of the crisis - including Defence Secretary Geoff Hoon, Tony Blair's spin chief Alastair Campbell, BBC reporter Andrew Gilligan and intelligence chief John Scarlett - are all being brought back before Lord Hutton.

Mr Hoon's career may be in the balance

And this time around they will get the full treatment from some of the most formidable legal minds in the business.

The outcome will not only prove crucial to the eventual findings, but will decide future careers - possibly ending some.

It was always unlikely that Tony Blair would be recalled to face such cross examination.

That would have been an extraordinary and unprecedented sight.

But Lord Hutton has shown he is not shy of going to the very heart of government, the intelligence services and the BBC in his quest to get to the bottom of this tragedy.

Courteous counsel

Counsel to the inquiry, the always-courteous James Dingemans, set the scene for the next fortnight declaring the proceedings would be "fair, courteous and designed to elicit the truth".

"It is partly by our dealings with each other, whatever the circumstances may be, that we define ourselves," he said.

He probably only meant that in relation to the proceedings before Lord Hutton.

But it was impossible not to feel the comment also went to the core of Dr Kelly's treatment.

And while the fair and courteous bit may reassure some of the witnesses to come, the part about eliciting the truth may give others pause for thought.

Dogged by war?

Because it could not now be clearer that this inquiry will not simply deliver a verdict on the narrow point of Dr David Kelly's apparent suicide.

Whatever Lord Hutton finds, this inquiry has already gone to the very heart of the way Britain was taken to war on Saddam Hussein.

And in various quarters it seems almost certain that someone will have to carry the can.

Enough questions have been raised by the preceding 15 days to ensure these will be robust and probably argumentative sessions

Geoff Hoon is still seen as the most likely fall guy on the government side and his cross examination by the Kelly family barrister will be riveting and, quite possibly decisive.

Mr Campbell is also likely to face a tough grilling over his role in the production of the dossier on Iraq's weapons of mass destruction.

Mr Gilligan will also be re-examined about precisely what Dr Kelly told him in their now famous meeting in the Charing Cross hotel.

It seems likely he will also be asked about the e-mail questions he sent for a Lib Dem MP to ask Dr Kelly - including his apparent "outing" of the scientist as the source for a BBC Newsnight report.

Enough questions have been raised by the preceding 15 days to ensure these will be robust and probably argumentative sessions.

They will also be informed not just by the previous evidence sessions, but also last week's report by the government's Intelligence and Security Committee.

That body cleared Mr Campbell "or anybody else" of sexing up the dossier, as claimed by Mr Gilligan in his controversial broadcast.

New terror risk?

That was once again reinforced by former defence intelligence chiefs in their evidence on the first day of the re-convened sitting.

But the ISC report also raised fundamental questions over the way intelligence was used when the government presented the case for war.

Suggestions that the prime minister over-ruled intelligence chiefs' advice that a war on Iraq could increase terrorism have already moved this crisis in a new direction.

As have claims - robustly denied - in a new book that Foreign Secretary Jack Straw warned the prime minister against going to war on the eve of the conflict.

All this provides the increasingly dramatic backdrop to this inquiry which, over the next two weeks, will aim to finally lift the veil on the events which led to war and later to the death of Dr David Kelly.