As part of the process, every individual to be criticised is sent draft passages giving them an opportunity to comment.
Blair, Jack Straw, Sir Richard Dearlove, then head of MI6, and many others, are receiving draft passages of the report in which Chilcot intends to criticise them.
Along with Jack Straw, then foreign secretary, and government departments, he will almost certainly face criticism in draft passages of the report he has been shown.
Every individual criticised is being sent the draft passages relating to them prior to publication, giving them an opportunity to comment.
His report has also been held up by the "Maxwellisation" process, whereby witnesses that the inquiry intends to criticise are given relevant draft passages to which they can respond.
Chilcot and his team did not want to send draft passages to those in the firing line – in the so-called Maxwellisation process – until he knew what could be published.
The "Maxwellisation" process – the name comes from a case involving the disgraced media magnate Robert Maxwell – means those who have been criticised will have received relevant draft passages before publication of the final report.
She had been sent draft passages of the report, which she described as "very poor", suggesting the delay was caused by a need for extensive rewriting rather than the Maxwellisation process.
Then, it seemed, all was forgotten, as the Chilcot inquiry got bogged down for years, first in arguments with Whitehall over what it could publish about Blair's conversations with Bush, then with those who were sent draft passages of the report in which they were criticised.
Maudling told me that, when he drafted a passage on the subject for the leader's conference speech, Churchill told him: "I don't believe a word of it".
