The ousted chairman of American International Group, Maurice “Hank” Greenberg, lashed out yesterday at Attorney General Eliot Spitzer and offered an impassioned defense of his own stewardship of both the world’s largest insurance company and one of New York’s largest private foundations, the Starr Foundation.

Mr. Spitzer this week accused Mr. Greenberg of taking advantage of the Starr Foundation in a series of transactions that happened 35 years ago.

Mr. Greenberg, in an interview with The New York Sun, said he was angry that Mr. Spitzer had made the allegations in a publicly released report rather than in court. “The proper place to make allegations is in a courtroom,” Mr. Greenberg said. “To choose this forum to do it is simply inappropriate.”

Mr. Greenberg said that the assets of the foundation had grown from $1 million when Cornelius Vander Starr died in 1968 – plus another $15 million if one includes the value of Starr’s estate – to $3.5 billion today. In addition, over that period, the foundation gave away $2 billion.

“To suggest that we did something improper not only is an outrage, it’s an insult,” Mr. Greenberg said. “Everybody should be outraged by it.”

When a reporter noted that many other business leaders have settled with Mr. Spitzer in order to get him off their backs, Mr. Greenberg replied, “I’ve got a big, strong back.”

He said Mr. Spitzer, who is running for governor as a Democrat, “wants political headlines.”

He said he viewed Mr. Spitzer’s assault on him as an assault on the rule of law, and appealed for support in what he described as an effort to “preserve our way of life.”

“How do people like Hitler come to power? People are afraid to speak out,” Mr. Greenberg said.

Mr. Greenberg recalled the eight years he worked with C.V. Starr, who was the founder of what became AIG. Mr. Greenberg described it as “a tiny company” with revenues of $1.2 million a year, offices on Maiden Lane in downtown Manhattan, and a few hundred employees. “We were his family,” Mr. Greenberg said. “I think he’d have been proud of what we accomplished. I think if he could speak, he’d say, ‘Well done.'”

As for the 35-year-old transaction criticized by Mr. Spitzer, Mr. Greenberg accused the attorney general of “an attempt to find wrongdoing where there was none.”

“What happened was done honorably and properly by honorable people,” Mr. Greenberg said.

Mr.Greenberg, 80, was wearing a digital watch and a shirt monogrammed on the pocket with his initials, MRG, during the interview, which took place at the Midtown offices of the Starr Foundation and C.V. Starr Company. In the outer reception area of the office, his wife Corrine was supervising the hanging of Asian art on the walls.

Background material prepared by the team of lawyers representing Mr. Greenberg and the other surviving executors of the estate of Cornelius Vander Starr says that the executors “discharged their responsibilities in accordance with Mr. Starr’s express wishes, their fiduciary duties, and all applicable laws and regulations.” The lawyers include Robert Morvillo, David Boies, and Kenneth Bialkin. (Mr. Bialkin, of Skadden Arps, is general counsel of the New York Sun.)

The background material says that Mr. Spitzer’s office “is now grasping at straws, trying to implicate Mr. Greenberg in anything it can come up with – even if it has to go back to the era of Lyndon Johnson.”

In a statement, the executors – Mr. Greenberg, Houghton Freeman, John J. Roberts, and Ernest Stempel – said “The conduct and attitude of the attorney general in his pursuit of these allegations reflects a pattern of abuse and bad faith adopted toward Mr. Greenberg from the beginning of the investigation of AIG. The people of New York deserve an attorney general who is intent on fighting crime and solving the state’s problems, not harassing its citizens and philanthropic organizations.” Said the statement, “The attorney general should be ashamed of himself.”

A spokesman for the attorney general, Darren Dopp, said Mr. Spitzer had nothing personal against Mr. Greenberg. “Mr. Greenberg is a person of an earlier era,” when controversies were handled privately. “Mr. Spitzer doesn’t operate that way,” Mr. Dopp said. “We couldn’t ignore it and wouldn’t conceal it.”

Mr. Dopp accused Mr. Greenberg of “trying to divert attention” from what he alleged were “a series of transactions designed by Mr. Greenberg that took advantage of the foundation he was supposed to serve.”

“We haven’t ruled out a lawsuit,” Mr. Dopp said. He said that the attorney general also has the power to remove a non-profit’s board members; Mr. Greenberg is a board member and chairman of the Starr Foundation.

The report issued this week by the attorney general said that if the executors of Starr’s estate had sold its holdings for more money than they did, the additional sums that would have gone to the foundation would have appreciated to an amount now worth $6 billion.

Mr. Greenberg resigned as chairman of AIG in March under pressure from Mr. Spitzer after decades of overseeing the company’s growth into the largest insurance company in the world, as measured by market capitalization. In May, Mr. Spitzer filed suit against Mr. Greenberg, AIG, and former AIG CFO Howard Smith, accusing them of engaging in what Mr. Spitzer called “deception and fraud in an apparent effort to improve the company’s financial results.” While AIG has said it will restate some earnings, Mr. Greenberg, Mr. Smith, and the company have denied they engaged in fraud. Mr. Spitzer’s office has said it will pursue the case as a civil, not a criminal, matter.