He can try and argue that he was ignorant of the crimes; but he cannot deny responsibility for the cover-up. And a classic cover-up it was. A critical piece of evidence, a letter from one of their chief phone-hackers, was edited to remove the money parts:
As Marian Wang, a blogger for ProPublica, points out, another copy of Mr. Goodman’s letter was also supplied to the parliamentary committee by News International, in response to a request from the panel. What is most interesting about the version that News International produced is that it omits more than just names from the letter — two entire sections of Mr. Goodman’s letter are missing. Both sections relate to Mr. Goodman’s claim that the newspaper’s editor, Mr. Coulson, and its senior lawyer, Tom Crone, had assured the reporter that he would not lose his job as long as he “did not implicate the paper or any of its staff,” during his trial.
This is obstruction of justice, it seems to me. Here's the section that someone high up at News International removed before handing it to the parliamentary committee tasked with looking for evidence that hacking was more widespread than a lone rogue reporter:
iii My conviction and imprisonment cannot be the real reason for my dismissal. The legal manager, Tom Crone, attended virtually every meeting of my legal team and was given full access to the Crown Prosecution Service’s evidence files. He, and other senior staff of the paper, had long advance knowledge that I would plead guilty. Despite this, the paper continued to employ me. Throughout my suspension, I was given book serialisations to write and was consulted on several occasions about royal stories they needed to check. The paper continued to employ me for a substantial part of my custodial sentence.
iv Tom Crone and the Editor promised on many occasions that I could come back to a job at the newspaper if I did not implicate the paper or any of its staff in my mitigation plea. I did not, and I expect the paper to honour its promise to me.
Coulson is toast.
The Dish 