PHILADELPHIA -
Lawyers for ousted Penn State president Graham Spanier Wednesday fired back at the Freeh Report- claiming Spanier knew nothing of Jerry Sandusky's years of child molesting while at Happy Valley.
The former FBI director had claimed Spanier and other top PSU officials knew about and covered up Sandusky's crimes to avoid bad publicity.
But Wednesday, Spanier's lawyers used a newly released letter to show the infamous shower rape incident in 2001 was not the smoking gun Freeh claimed it to be.
The accusation is that Graham Spanier knew about and covered up, Sandusky's rape of a young boy in the Lasch Football Building showers in 2001.
But Spanier's lawyers released an August 9, 2012 letter from Dr. Gary Gray, a Penn State alum and former football player, who wrote about his visit to a dying coach Joe Paterno in December of last year.
Gray quotes Paterno as describing what witness Mike McQueary told him about the shower incident a decade earlier, saying "Joe said that McQueary had told him that he had seen Jerry engage in horseplay, or horsing around, with a young boy. McQueary wasn't sure what as happening, but he said that it made him feel uncomfortable."
Quoting Gray in the letter, "in recounting McQueary's conversation to me, coach Paterno did not use any terms with sexual overtones."
Later in the letter, Gray describes a conversation with McQueary family friend Dr. Jonathan Dranov, whom McQueary had told about the shower incident shortly after it happened.
The letter details McQueary's description to Dranov: "Mike said that he had seen Jerry Sandusky horsing around with a young boy in a shower..."
But, said attorney Jack Riley, quoting from the letter, "Dr. Dranov told me that he had asked Mike McQueary several times, if he had seen anything sexual. Each time, Mike McMcQueary answered, 'No.'"
The claim is that McQueary's vague description of the incident left Spanier in the dark- unable to cover up a crime about which he knew nothing.
Spanier himself is expected to be interviewed on network television Wednesday night and again Thursday morning. Investigators may be watching, in hopes of finding inconsistencies with Spanier's claim of ignorance.
