MR. JUSTICE REHNQUIST delivered the opinion of the Court.

Respondent Apfelbaum invoked his privilege against compulsory self-incrimination while being questioned before a grand jury in the Eastern District of Pennsylvania. The Government then granted him immunity in accordance with 18 U.S.C. § 6002, and he answered the questions propounded to him. He was then charged with and convicted of making false statements in the course of those answers. The Court of Appeals reversed the conviction, however, because the District Court had admitted into evidence relevant portions of respondent's grand jury testimony that had not been alleged in the indictment to constitute the "corpus delicti" or "core" of the false-statements offense. Because proper invocation of the Fifth Amendment privilege against compulsory self-incrimination allows a witness to remain silent, but not to swear falsely, we hold that neither the statute nor the Fifth Amendment requires that the admissibility of immunized testimony be governed by any different rules than other testimony at a trial for making false statements in violation of 18 U.S.C. § 1623 (a) (1976 ed., Supp. II). We therefore reverse the judgment of the Court of Appeals.

I

The grand jury had been investigating alleged criminal activities in connection with an automobile dealership located in the Chestnut Hill section of Philadelphia. The investigation focused on a robbery of $175,000 in cash that occurred at the dealership on April 16, 1975, and on allegations that two officers of the dealership staged the robbery in order to repay loan-shark debts. The grand jury also heard testimony that the officers were making extortionate extensions of credit through the Chestnut Hill Lincoln-Mercury dealership.

In 1976, respondent Apfelbaum, then an administrative assistant to the District Attorney in Philadelphia, was called to testify because it was thought likely that he was an aider or abettor or an accessory after the fact to the allegedly staged robbery. When the grand jury first sought to question him about his relationship with the two dealership officials suspected of the staged robbery, he claimed his Fifth Amendment privilege against compulsory self-incrimination and refused to testify. The District Judge entered an order pursuant to 18 U.S.C. § 6002 granting him immunity and compelling him to testify. Respondent ultimately complied with this order to testify.

During the course of his grand jury testimony, respondent made two series of statements that served as the basis for his subsequent indictment and conviction for false swearing. The first series was made in response to questions concerning whether respondent had attempted to locate Harry Brown, one of the two dealership officials, while on a "fishing trip" in Ft. Lauderdale, Fla., during the month of December 1975. Respondent testified that he was "positive" he had not attempted to locate Brown, who was also apparently in the Ft. Lauderdale area at the time. In a second series of statements, respondent denied that he had told FBI agents that he had lent $10,000 to Brown. The grand jury later indicted respondent pursuant to 18 U.S.C. § 1623 (a) (1976 ed., Supp. II) for making these statements, charging that the two series of statements were false and that respondent knew they were false.

At trial, the Government introduced into evidence portions of respondent's grand jury testimony in order to put the charged statements in context and to show that respondent knew they were false. The excerpts concerned respondent's relationship with Brown, his 1976 trip to Florida to visit Brown, the discussions he had with Brown on that occasion, and his denial that he had financial dealings with the automobile dealership in Philadelphia or had cosigned a loan for Brown. Respondent objected to the use of all the immunized testimony except the portions charged in the indictment as false. The District Court overruled the objection and admitted the excerpts into evidence on the ground that they were relevant to prove that respondent had knowingly made the charged false statements. The jury found respondent guilty on both counts of the indictment.

The Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit reversed, holding that because the immunized testimony did not constitute "the corpus delicti or core of a defendant's false swearing indictment" it could not be introduced. 584 F.2d 1264, 1265 (1978). We granted certiorari because of the importance of the issue and because of a difference in approach to it among the Courts of Appeals. 440 U.S. 957 (1979).

The differing views that this question has elicited from the Courts of Appeals are not surprising, because there are considered statements in one line of cases from this Court, and both statements and actual holdings in another line of cases, that as a matter of strict and literal reading cannot be wholly reconciled. Though most of the decisions of the Courts of Appeals turn on the interaction between perjury and immunity statutes enacted by Congress and the privilege against compulsory self-incrimination conferred by the Fifth Amendment to the United States Constitution, it is of course our first duty to decide whether the statute relied upon in this case to sustain the conviction of respondent may properly be interpreted to do so. We turn now to decision of that question.

II

Did Congress intend the federal immunity statute, 18 U.S.C. § 6002, to limit the use of a witness' immunized grand jury testimony in a subsequent prosecution of the witness for false statements made at the grand jury proceeding? Respondent contends that while § 6002 permits the use of a witness' false statements in a prosecution for perjury or for making false declarations, it establishes an absolute prohibition against the use of truthful immunized testimony in such prosecutions. But this contention is wholly at odds with the explicit language of the statute, and finds no support even in its legislative history.

It is a well-established principle of statutory construction that absent clear evidence of a contrary legislative intention, a statute should be interpreted according to its plain language. Here 18 U.S.C. § 6002 provides that when a witness is compelled to testify over his claim of a Fifth Amendment privilege, "no testimony or other information compelled under the order (or any information directly or indirectly derived from such testimony or other information) may be used against the witness in any criminal case, except a prosecution for perjury, giving a false statement, or otherwise failing to comply with the order." (Emphasis added.) The statute thus makes no distinction between truthful and untruthful statements made during the course of the immunized testimony. Rather, it creates a blanket exemption from the bar against the use of immunized testimony in cases in which the witness is subsequently prosecuted for making false statements.

The legislative history of § 6002 shows that Congress intended the perjury and false-declarations exception to be interpreted as broadly as constitutionally permissible. The present statute was enacted as a part of the Organized Crime Control Act of 1970, after a re-examination of the broad transactional immunity statute enacted in response to this Court's decision in Counselman v. Hitchcock, 142 U.S. 547 (1892). See Kastigar v. United States, 406 U.S. 441, 452, and n. 36 (1972). Its design was not only to bring about uniformity in the operation of immunity grants within the federal system, but also to restrict the grant of immunity to that required by the United States Constitution. Thus, the statute derives from a 1969 report of the National Commission on the Reform of the Federal Criminal Laws, which proposed a general use immunity statute under which "the immunity conferred would be confined to the scope required by the Fifth Amendment." And as stated in both the Senate and House Reports on the proposed legislation:

"This statutory immunity is intended to be as broad as, but no broader than, the privilege against self-incrimination. . . . It is designed to reflect the use-restriction immunity concept of Murphy v. Waterfront Commission, 378 U.S. 52 (1964) rather [than] the transaction immunity concept of Counselman v. Hitchcock, 142 U.S. 547 (1892)."

In light of the language and legislative history of § 6002, the conclusion is inescapable that Congress intended to permit the use of both truthful and false statements made during the course of immunized testimony if such use was not prohibited by the Fifth Amendment.

III

The limitation placed on the use of relevant evidence by the Court of Appeals may be justified, then, only if required by the Fifth Amendment. Respondent contends that his conviction was properly reversed because under the Fifth Amendment his truthful immunized statements were inadmissible at his perjury trial, and the Government never met its burden of showing that the immunized statements it introduced into evidence were not truthful. The Court of Appeals, as noted above, concluded that the Fifth Amendment prohibited the use of all immunized testimony except the "corpus delicti" or "core" of the false swearing indictment.

In reaching its conclusion, the Court of Appeals initially observed that a grant of immunity must be coextensive with the Fifth Amendment. Kastigar v. United States, supra, at 449. It then reasoned that had respondent not been granted immunity, he would have been entitled under the Fifth Amendment to remain silent. And if he had remained silent, he would not have answered any questions, truthfully or falsely. There consequently would have been no testimony whatsoever to use against him. A prosecution for perjury committed at the immunized proceeding, the Court of Appeals continued, must be permitted because "as a practical matter, if immunity constituted a license to lie, the purpose of immunity would be defeated." Such a prosecution is but a "narrow exception" carved out to preserve the integrity of the truth-seeking process. But the subsequent use of statements made at the immunized proceeding, other than those alleged in the indictment to be false, is impermissible because the introduction of such statements cannot be reconciled with the privilege against self-incrimination. 584 F.2d, at 1269-1271.

A

There is more than one flaw in this reasoning. Initially, it presumes that in order for a grant of immunity to be "co-extensive with the Fifth Amendment privilege," the witness must be treated as if he had remained silent. This presumption focuses on the effect of the assertion of the Fifth Amendment privilege, rather than on the protection the privilege is designed to confer. In so doing, it calls into question the constitutionality of all immunity statutes, including "transactional" immunity statutes as well as "use" immunity statutes such as § 6002. Such grants of immunity would not provide a full and complete substitute for a witness' silence because, for example, they do not bar the use of the witness' statements in civil proceedings. Indeed, they fail to prevent the use of such statements for any purpose that might cause detriment to the witness other than that resulting from subsequent criminal prosecution.

This Court has never held, however, that the Fifth Amendment requires immunity statutes to preclude all uses of immunized testimony. Such a requirement would be inconsistent with the principle that the privilege does not extend to consequences of a noncriminal nature, such as threats of liability in civil suits, disgrace in the community, or the loss of employment. See, e. g., Brown v. Walker, 161 U.S. 591, 605-606 (1896); Smith v. United States, 337 U.S. 137, 147 (1949); Ullmann v. United States, 350 U.S. 422, 430-431 (1956); Uniformed Sanitation Men Assn. v. Commissioner of Sanitation, 392 U.S. 280, 284-285 (1968); Gardner v. Broderick, 392 U.S. 273, 279 (1968).

And this Court has repeatedly recognized the validity of immunity statutes. Kastigar v. United States, 406 U.S., at 449, acknowledged that Congress included immunity statutes in many of the regulatory measures adopted in the first half of this century, and that at the time of the enactment of 18 U.S.C. § 6002, the statute under which this prosecution was brought, there were in force over 50 federal immunity statutes as well as similar laws in every State of the Union. 406 U.S., at 447. This Court in Ullmann v. United States, supra, stated that such statutes have "become part of our constitutional fabric." 350 U.S., at 438. And the validity of such statutes may be traced in our decisions at least as far back as Brown v. Walker, supra.

These cases also establish that a strict and literal reading of language in cases such as Counselman v. Hitchcock, 142 U.S., at 585 — that an immunity statute "cannot abridge a constitutional privilege, and that it cannot replace or supply one, at least unless it is so broad as to have the same extent in scope and effect" — does not require the sort of "but for" analysis used by the Court of Appeals in order to enable it to survive attack as being violative of the privilege against compulsory self-incrimination. Indeed, in Brown v. Walker, supra, at 600, this Court stated that "[t]he danger of extending the principle announced in Counselman v. Hitchcock is that the privilege may be put forward for a sentimental reason, or for a purely fanciful protection of the witness against an imaginary danger, and for the real purpose of securing immunity to some third person, who is interested in concealing the facts to which he would testify." And in Kastigar v. United States, we concluded that "[t]he broad language in Counselman relied upon by petitioners was unnecessary to the Court's decision, and cannot be considered binding authority." 406 U.S., at 454-455. Kastigar also expressly declined a request by the petitioner to reconsider and overrule Brown v. Walker, supra, and Ullmann v. United States, supra, and went on to expressly reaffirm the validity of those decisions.

The reasoning of the Court of Appeals is also internally inconsistent in that logically it would not permit a prosecution for perjury or false swearing committed during the course of the immunized testimony. If a witness must be treated as if he had remained silent, the mere requirement that he answer questions, thereby subjecting himself to the possibility of being subsequently prosecuted for perjury or false swearing, places him in a position that is substantially different from that he would have been in had he been permitted to remain silent.

All of the Courts of Appeals, however, have recognized that the provision in 18 U.S.C. § 6002 allowing prosecutions for perjury in answering questions following a grant of immunity does not violate the Fifth Amendment privilege against compulsory self-incrimination. And we ourselves have repeatedly held that perjury prosecutions are permissible for false answers to questions following the grant of immunity. See, e. g., United States v. Wong, 431 U.S. 174 (1977); United States v. Mandujano, 425 U.S. 564 (1976) (plurality opinion); id., at 584-585 (BRENNAN, J., concurring in judgment); id., at 609 (STEWART, J., joined by BLACKMUN, J., concurring in judgment).

It is therefore analytically incorrect to equate the benefits of remaining silent as a result of invocation of the Fifth Amendment privilege with the protections conferred by the privilege — protections that may be invoked with respect to matters that pose substantial and real hazards of subjecting a witness to criminal liability at the time he asserts the privilege. For a grant of immunity to provide protection "coextensive" with that of the Fifth Amendment, it need not treat the witness as if he had remained silent. Such a conclusion, as noted above, is belied by the fact that immunity statutes and prosecutions for perjury committed during the course of immunized testimony are permissible at all.

B

The principle that the Fifth Amendment privilege against compulsory self-incrimination provides no protection for the commission of perjury has frequently been cited without any elaboration as to its underlying rationale. See, e. g., Bryson v. United States, 396 U.S. 64, 72 (1969); United States v. Knox, 396 U.S. 77, 82 (1969). Its doctrinal foundation, as relied on in both Wong and Mandujano, is traceable to Glickstein v. United States, 222 U.S. 139, 142 (1911). Glickstein stated that the Fifth Amendment "does not endow the person who testifies with a license to commit perjury," ibid., and that statement has been so often repeated in our cases as to be firmly established constitutional law. But just as we have refused to read literally the broad dicta of Counselman, supra, we are likewise unwilling to decide this case solely upon an epigram contained in Glickstein, supra. Thus, even if, as the Court of Appeals said, a perjury prosecution is but a "narrow exception" to the principle that a witness should be treated as if he had remained silent, it does not follow that the Court of Appeals was correct in its view of the question before us now.

Perjury prosecutions based on immunized testimony, even if they be but a "narrow exception" to the principle that a witness should be treated as if he had remained silent after invoking the Fifth Amendment privilege, are permitted by our cases. And so long as they are, there is no principle or decision that limits the admissibility of evidence in a manner peculiar only to them. To so hold would not be an exercise in the balancing of competing constitutional rights, but in a comparison of apples and oranges. For even if both truthful and untruthful testimony from the immunized proceeding are admissible in a subsequent perjury prosecution, the exception surely would still be properly regarded as "narrow," once it is recognized that the testimony remains inadmissible in all prosecutions for offenses committed prior to the grant of immunity that would have permitted the witness to invoke his Fifth Amendment privilege absent the grant.

While the application of the Fifth Amendment privilege to various types of claims has changed in some respects over the past three decades, the basic test reaffirmed in each case has been the same.

"The central standard for the privilege's application has been whether the claimant is confronted by substantial and `real,' and not merely trifling or imaginary, hazards of incrimination. Rogers v. United States, 340 U.S. 367, 374; Brown v. Walker, 161 U.S. 591, 600." Marchetti v. United States, 390 U.S. 39, 53 (1968).

In United States v. Freed, 401 U.S. 601 (1971), this Court rejected the argument that a registration requirement of the National Firearms Act violated the Fifth Amendment because the information disclosed could be used in connection with offenses that the transferee of the firearm might commit in the future. In so doing, the Court stated:

"Appellees' argument assumes the existence of a periphery of the Self-Incrimination Clause which protects a person against incrimination not only against past or present transgressions but which supplies insulation for a career of crime about to be launched. We cannot give the Self-Incrimination Clause such an expansive interpretation." Id., at 606-607.

And MR. JUSTICE BRENNAN in his concurring opinion added:

"I agree with the Court that the Self-Incrimination Clause of the Fifth Amendment does not require that immunity be given as to the use of such information in connection with crimes that the transferee might possibly commit in the future with the registered firearm." Id., at 611.

In light of these decisions, we conclude that the Fifth Amendment does not prevent the use of respondent's immunized testimony at his trial for false swearing because, at the time he was granted immunity, the privilege would not have protected him against false testimony that he later might decide to give. Respondent's assertion of his Fifth Amendment privilege arose from his claim that the questions relating to his connection with the Chestnut Hill auto dealership would tend to incriminate him. The Government consequently granted him "use" immunity under § 6002, which prevents the use and derivative use of his testimony with respect to any subsequent criminal case except prosecutions for perjury and false swearing offenses, in exchange for his compelled testimony.

The Government has kept its part of the bargain; this is a perjury prosecution and not any other kind of criminal prosecution. The Court of Appeals agreed that such a prosecution might be maintained, but as noted above severely limited the admissibility of immunized testimony to prove the Government's case. We believe that it could not be fairly said that respondent, at the time he asserted his privilege and was consequently granted immunity, was confronted with more than a "trifling or imaginary" hazard of compelled self-incrimination as a result of the possibility that he might commit perjury during the course of his immunized testimony. In United States v. Bryan, 339 U.S. 323 (1950), we held that an immunity statute that provided that "[n]o testimony given by a witness before . . . any committee of either House . . . shall be used as evidence in any criminal proceeding against him in any court, except in a prosecution for perjury committed in giving such testimony," did not bar the use at respondent's trial for willful default of the testimony given by her before a congressional committee. In so holding, we stated that "[t]here is, in our jurisprudence, no doctrine of `anticipatory contempt.'" Id., at 341.

We hold here that in our jurisprudence there likewise is no doctrine of "anticipatory perjury." In the criminal law, both a culpable mens rea and a criminal actus reus are generally required for an offense to occur. Similarly, a future intention to commit perjury or to make false statements if granted immunity because of a claim of compulsory self-incrimination is not by itself sufficient to create a "substantial and `real'" hazard that permits invocation of the Fifth Amendment. Brown v. Walker, 161 U.S. 591 (1896); Rogers v. United States, 340 U.S. 367 (1951). Therefore, neither the immunity statute nor the Fifth Amendment precludes the use of respondent's immunized testimony at a subsequent prosecution for making false statements, so long as that testimony conforms to otherwise applicable rules of evidence. The exception of a perjury prosecution from the prohibition against the use of immunized testimony may be a narrow one, but it is also a complete one. The Court of Appeals having held otherwise, its judgment is accordingly

Reversed.