PHILADELPHIA -- Ousted Penn State president Graham Spanier and his lawyers attacked a university-backed report on the Jerry Sandusky sex abuse scandal on Wednesday, calling it a "blundering and indefensible indictment" as they fired a pre-emptive strike while waiting to hear if he'll be charged in the case.

Lawyer Timothy Lewis called Louis Freeh, the former FBI director and federal judge behind the report, a "biased investigator" who piled speculation on top of innuendo to accuse Spanier in a cover-up of early abuse complaints.

"The Freeh report, as it pertains to Dr. Spanier, is a myth. And that myth ... ends today," Lewis said at a downtown Philadelphia news conference.

Spanier did not attend. But he told media outlets in stories published hours later that he never understood the early complaints about Sandusky, who this year was convicted of molesting 10 boys, to be sexual.

"I'm very stunned by Freeh's conclusion that -- I don't think he used the word 'cover-up'; but he uses the word 'concealed,'" Spanier told The New Yorker magazine. "Why on earth would anybody cover up for a known child predator? Adverse publicity? For heaven's sake! Every day I had to make some decision that got adverse publicity."

"Never in my time as president of Penn State did I ever -- ever once -- receive a report from anyone that suggested that Jerry Sandusky was involved in any child abuse, in any sexual abuse, in any criminal act," Spanier told ABC in an interview aired on "Nightline" late Wednesday night.

Spanier told ABC that he was told only that Sandusky had been seen engaging in "horseplay" in a campus shower with a boy and he took that to mean "throwing water around, snapping towels."

"I wish in hindsight that I would have known more about Jerry Sandusky and his terrible, terrible hidden past so that I could have intervened because it would have been my instinct to do so," he said.

The New Yorker interview was published online after ABC News began promoting its own interview with Spanier, set to air in parts on several of its networks Wednesday and Thursday.

At the news conference, Lewis, also a former federal judge, complained that Freeh never interviewed key witnesses, ignored inconvenient facts and manipulated the truth.