missing WMD expert is found dead!

The Telegraph pictures a grinning Tony Blair taking a dip in the sea off Barbados - where, the paper points out, the temperature was a "cool" 84F. (There is much tabloid comment on the PM's beachwear - "a tight-fitting pair of shorts and vest".)

"Today, though, the reckoning is approaching," warns Simon Heffer in the Mail. "Lord Hutton, appointed to inquire into the suicide of Dr David Kelly, starts to take evidence this morning. We'll soon know what role Downing Street and the Ministry of Defence had in precipitating the death of the weapons expert." Heffer himself is in little doubt: "He will probably survive... [but] he is permanently damaged."

Indeed, says the Guardian, "the mood in Whitehall has darkened" as No 10 realises that the BBC has "won the propaganda battle" already - despite the best efforts of the Sun.

"If anyone should be worried, it's the BBC," says the paper, which has drawn up 10 "vital questions" the Hutton inquiry must answer. "Why did the BBC reject repeated attempts by No 10 to put the story right? ... Why did the BBC not apologise to his family for not confirming he was their main source when he was still alive and able to defend himself?" (And denying it, the paper doesn't say). And so on.

The Guardian calls it "one of the most explosive scandals since the Profumo affair". The BBC says it does have evidence that Dr Kelly criticised the dossier on Iraq's WMDs, and that he was "far from alone".

The FT picks up yesterday's Sunday Telegraph report claiming that the MoD's permanent secretary described Dr Kelly as "eccentric" and said the department had deliberately "outed" him. Proof of Dr Kelly's unreliability? Or further evidence of a Downing Street smear campaign? Depends which paper you believe.

"Poor David Kelly would have discovered the meaning of professional loneliness," John Keegan writes in the Telegraph. "I doubt strongly that it was his treatment by parliament or the media that drove him over the edge ... Old colleagues would have kept their distance. Rooms would have fallen silent when he entered."

POWELL HAD DOUBTS ABOUT THREAT POSED BY SADDAM

Of all the evidence presented to the Hutton inquiry yesterday, most of the papers single out No 10 chief of staff Jonathan Powell's email of September 17 as the most important. The Mirror's two-inch headline states simply "No threat", and its deputy political editors, Oonagh Blackman, writes: "Tony Blair's chief aide thought an early version of the Iraq dossier did not 'demonstrate a threat, let alone an imminent threat' from Saddam Hussein." Similarly, the Telegraph headlines: "No 10 chief's doubts on dossiers".

The Guardian points out the discrepancy between Alastair Campbell's view on the threat posed by Iraq's as yet undiscovered WMDs and that expressed by Mr Blair. It prints the two in bold across almost half its front page. "We will need to make it clear in launching the document that we do not claim that we have evidence that [Saddam] is an imminent threat," wrote Mr Powell. The following week, Mr Blair, launching the WMD dossier, claimed: "[Saddam] has existing and active military plans for the use of chemical and biological weapons, which could be activated within 45 minutes."

A number of the papers have picked up on today's Guardian/ICM poll, which should make grim reading for Mr Campbell as he prepares to head off for the Royal Courts of Justice. It found that half the electorate believes that the government's WMD dossier was "deliberately embellished to make a case for war".

The FT makes much of the revelations of how No 10 - and particularly the prime minister - was involved in the Ministry of Defence's attempt to rebut Andrew Gilligan's Today programme story. Its front page says: "Tony Blair was personally involved in deciding how the government should handle David Kelly... the prime minister told aides he thought the weapons inspector 'probably had' to appear in public before a parliamentary inquiry."

Predictably, it is the Sun which makes most of Sir David Manning's angry rebuttal of Mr Gilligan's charge. Mr Blair's foreign policy adviser is "a pillar of probity with a Rolls-Royce brain," according to its political editor Trevor Kavanagh, and he "spelt out precisely why Andrew Gilligan's claims about fiddling dossiers are tosh".

"The idea that MI6, MI5 and the Joint Intelligence Committee would collude to mislead parliament is purely for the conspiracy theorists," he concludes. Sun columnist Richard Littlejohn concurs that the case for war needed no enhancement. "There was no need for Alastair Campbell to start a full-scale big willy contest with the BBC," he writes.

Today's star witness is Mr Campbell himself. The Mail's Ross Benson describes what a poor witness he has made in the past, particularly when he appeared in a libel action brought by the former Tory MP and spy writer Rupert Allason. Then Mr Justice Drake said of Mr Blair's director of communications: "I did not find not find Mr Campbell by any means a wholly satisfactory or convincing witness." He will have to do better today.

Iraq weapons expert David Kelly predicted his death six months ago, telling a British diplomat that if Baghdad were attacked he would be found "dead in the woods", the inquiry into his death was told today.

Yer just a kid, Hobit, I kin tell!

The e-mail said Dr Kelly feared that in the event of an invasion it would have appeared that he had "betrayed his contacts, some of whom might be killed as a direct result of his actions."

The e-mail repeated Dr Kelly's statement that following on from this "he would probably be found dead in the woods".