George W was poisoned, says Laura Bush

Laura Bush, the wife of former US president George W Bush, will publish a memoir next month in which she raises the intriguing possibility that an attempt was made to poison her husband at a G8 summit in Germany. Spoken from the Heart also contains the first full account of a car crash the former First Lady had as a teenager, when she drove through a red light and into a friend's car, killing him.

On 7 June 2008, the Bushes enjoyed an official dinner in the Baltic Sea resort of Heiligendamm at the opening of that year's summit focusing on the fight against Aids, malaria and other diseases affecting the developing world. The next morning, the President, his wife and some staffers were taken violently ill.

"Nearly a dozen members of our delegation were stricken, even George, who started to feel sick during an early morning staff briefing," Laura Bush writes. "One of our military aides had difficulty walking and a White House staffer lost all hearing in one ear. Exceedingly alarmed, the Secret Service went on full alert, combing the resort for potential poisons."

"George felt so ill that he met with [Nicolas] Sarkozy and did not even stand up to greet him," she adds. In fact, the president had already been forced to skip the first meeting of the day, with Sarkozy announcing to the media: "Bush is slightly indisposed this morning and will rejoin the working meeting as soon as he can."

According to the New York Times, which has a preview copy of the memoir, the former First Lady then refers to several high-profile poisonings, and writes: "We never learned if any other delegations became ill, or if ours, mysteriously, was the only one."

Writing in the Guardian today, Ed Pilkington observes that: "It is normal for the US secret service as a precaution against poisoning to prepare all meals for presidents travelling abroad, which adds to the mystery surrounding this visit." Common sense would suggest the opposite conclusion: if the US delegation's meal is prepared separately, it would be natural that other delegations would not be affected in the same way - and unlikely that any poisoning was deliberate.

In fact, the Guardian's claim that US presidents bring their own food on foreign trips is belied by numerous documented visits to high-profile restaurants by presidents. These meals testify that US leaders do eat the local food when abroad - but they also suggest that poison plots are taken seriously.

After a visit to La Fontaine de Mars in Paris last summer (fried black pudding sausage with apple: 17 euros; homemade duck foie gras flavoured with Sauternes: 25 euros), the Obamas denied the restaurant's claim they had sent a secret service taster to the kitchens. And, back in 2003, George W Bush was said to have brought a taster to the kitchens of Buckingham Palace.

Laura Bush's memoir is the first time the word "poison" has been used by a credible source in relation to the president's illness at the G8 summit, and the theory has aroused considerable interest around the world. Appearing on US television yesterday though, Frances Townsend, who was George W Bush's homeland security adviser at the time, poured cold water on it. He confirmed he himself had been ill but said there was "no indication" of poisoning.

It seems the poisoning story is a flight of fancy by Laura Bush - or even, perish the thought, an attempt to spice up her recollections and stimulate some publicity. Townsend said last night: "Ultimately we didn't really believe there was a basis to think [we] were poisoned [but] you would have thought us not competent if we hadn't considered the possibility and looked at it."

Grabbing the headlines in the US is the story of Laura Bush's car crash at the age of 17. The fatal collision, described as "mysterious" in US media because she has never given a detailed account of it before, seems to have been quite straightforward: the youthful Texan pushed through a red light as she hurried to a drive-in cinema, chatting with her girlfriend on a dark night in November 1963. She drove her father's Chevy Impala sidelong into the much lighter car of her high school contemporary Mike Douglas, killing him.

Prevented from attending Douglas's funeral by her over-protective parents - something she now deeply regrets - Bush carries her guilt with her to this day. "I lost my faith that November, lost it for many, many years," she writes in a memoir from which - judging by the fragments available in the US media - she emerges as a far more sympathetic and thoughtful character than her critics would like to accept. ·