President George W. Bush’s performance at cabinet meetings resembled that of «a blind man in a room full of deaf people», according to Paul O’Neill, who was fired as Treasury secretary in 2002.

The remarkable personal attack is made by Mr O’Neill in a forthcoming book, according to excerpts from a television interview to be broadcast on Sunday.

The interview, one of the first with Mr O’Neill about his time in the administration, prefigures the publication on Tuesday of The Price of Loyalty, a book about the Bu sh White House by the journalist Ron Suskind.