John,
Others have told me about being warned by Robb London about perjury and self-incrimination during testimony. Lawyers say this is standard, but possibly lethal.
I didn't know that you can submit a sworn statement beforehand that all questions will go unanswered to avoid self-incrimination and that the US Attorneys Manual recommends excusing a grand jury witness who does that. See the USAM on this:
Interesting. This seems considerably at odds with the position taken by courts regarding use of 5th Amendment in IRS cases, which restrict the right of those testifying (information on tax forms is sworn and therefore treated as testimony) to specific items of inquiry and do not permit wholesale use of the 5th.
From U.S. vs. Sullivan.
"If the form of return provided called for answers that the defendant was privileged from making he could have raised the objection in the return, but could not on that account refuse to make any return at all. We are not called on to decide what, if anything, he might have withheld. Most of the items warranted no compaint. It would be an extreme if not an extravagant application [274 U.S. 259, 264] of the Fifth Amendment to say that it authorized a man to refuse to state the amount of his income because it had been made in crime. But if the defendant desired to test that or any other point he should have tested it in the return so that it could be passed upon. He could not draw a conjurer's circle around the whole matter by his own declaration that to write any word upon the government blank would bring him into danger of the law. Mason v. United States, 244 U.S. 362 , 37 S. Ct. 621; United States ex rel. Vajtauer v. Commissioner of Immigration ( January 3, 1927) 273 U.S. 103 , 47 S. Ct. 302. In this case the defendant did not even make a declaration, he simply abstained from making a return. See further the decision of the Privy Council, Minister of Finance v. Smith (1927) A. C. 193." http://caselaw.lp.findlaw.com/scripts/getcase.pl?navby=case&court=US&vol=274&page=259