“I still don’t think we know the extent of what the police did and did not do because we are only about halfway down into the murky pond,” said Chris Bryant, a Labour member of Parliament who is one of the four plaintiffs who applied for the judicial review.

A Toxic Atmosphere

Current and former officials said that shortly after Scotland Yard began looking into the hacking, five senior police investigators discovered that their own phones might have been broken into by The News of the World.

At last week’s hearing in Parliament, Mr. Hayman, one of the five, denied knowing if his phone had been hacked.

So far, only 170 phone-hacking victims have been notified.

A second police operation is now trying to determine how many officers were paid for information from journalists working at The News of the World and elsewhere. One of the challenges, a senior officer said, was that the journalists’ records contained pseudonyms instead of the officers’ names. There is suspicion that some pseudonyms were made up by reporters to pocket cash from their editors, the officer said.

The atmosphere at Scotland Yard has become toxic. “Everyone is rowing for the shore,” said a former senior Scotland Yard official. “Everyone is distancing themselves from this mess.”

Sue Akers, a deputy assistant commissioner who is leading both police inquiries, said the department faced a deep challenge to repair its reputation.

“I think it is everybody’s analysis that confidence has been damaged,” Ms. Akers told Parliament last week. “But I am confident that we have got an excellent team who are working tirelessly to get this right.”

She added: “I hope that I do not have to come back here in five years’ time to explain why we failed.”