I wonder if he could somehow cobble together a whistleblower defense? As someone else succinctly put it, a few persons in the CIA conspired to send Wilson to Africa in an unusual manner(and remember his not signing a confidentiality clause), he starts spreading misleading info to undermine the administration, and then the CIA tries to make it look like Chaney's office sent him. That comes close to treason. Outing VPlame was part of outing this subversive scheme.
Unfortunately, legally he's charged with lying to the grand jury, not outing her. But could not he argue that telling the truth in the GJ would be self-incriminating, and there was a greater good in outing this scheme, even if it required breaking the law? Daniel Ellsberg?
Something I've found to be increasingly intriguing.... the documents that Wilson claimed to be forgeries. The Senate Intelligence Committee revealed that Wilson had not seen the documents before he called them fakes. Now, there's a rift between the Italians and the French, as some Italian fellow (alias Giacomo?) admitted that he had been paid for some time by French Intelligence to undermine the war in Iraq by delivering false and misleading information to British and American Intelligence agencies, including the documents that Wilson claimed were fake.
If I've read this right, Wilson not only knew and reported of the existance of the documents before he could have physically seen them, he knew they were fakes before he had seen them. The only conclusion I can reach on this is that Wilson, his wife, French Intelligence, and probably someone in the CIA besides Wilson's wife were in collusion. There's just too many coincidences.
Here's a snip from one of the articles;
Giacomo" was allegedly first engaged by the French secret service to investigate genuine fears of illicit trafficking in uranium from Niger. He collected a dossier of documents - some real, some forged by a diplomat - by offering large sums of money to Niger officials.
American intelligence officials were further misled over Saddam's supposed attempt to buy uranium when France - which effectively controls mining in Niger - told Washington that it had reason to believe that Iraq was trying to do so. "Only later did Paris inform Washington that its belief had been based on the same documents that had tricked the Americans and the British," an Italian diplomat said.
"This was la grande trappola [the big trap]. The Americans were now convinced by the French that Saddam really was trying to buy uranium. They thought the French must be right, since not even a gram of uranium in Niger could be shifted without their knowledge."
http://news.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2004/09/05/wuran05.xml
"But could not he argue that telling the truth in the GJ would be self-incriminating"
If Libby believed his testimony would be self-incriminating, then he should have invoked his 5th Amendment protection. The worst thing to do is lie. The alternative was to use the Hillary Clinton defense: "I don't recall".
The time to invoke the 5th Amendment is before one testifies. He cannot invoke it to "erase" what's already been done, and if he invokes it for future proceedings, the statements upon which he has been indicted stand alone.
One of the news shows the other night had a panel of attorneys, one was David Boies, and they all agreed that they would advise a private client to invoke the 5th and refuse to testify so as not to end up like Martha Stewart or Libby, but as he is a public official, his refusal to testify would be more politically damaging than the personal damage which would result from the testimony.
These were attorneys of all political stripes, but they all agreed on that point.