Sharon Bush, former wife of Neil, has denied confirming for Kitty Kelley a story about her ex-brother-in-law George W. doing coke at Camp David during Poppy Bush's presidency. Sharon repeated her denial to Matt Lauer on the Today show a couple of days ago. In The New York Sun (subscription only), Tina Brown says there's at least one thing Sharon's lying about to protect her former in-laws:

I happen to know that Sharon fibbed frantically when she told Mr. Lauer that, yes, she had once been planning to write a book herself but it was a "self-help" book. Two years ago, I was invited to the apartment of a social grande dame to meet Sharon and offer her publishing advice about a tell-all she wanted to write about her life in the bosom of the Bush family. Sharon was accompanied by her then-PR rep, Lou Colasuonno, who has since flipped sides and confirmed Ms. Kelley's claim that Sharon endorsed the coke story.

The former Mrs. Neil Bush was a sad, lost soul that afternoon, dissolving into hanky-soaking tears as she talked for two hours about the lousy deal the presidential family had offered her in her acrimonious divorce from W's womanizing kid brother.

It wasn't a pretty story and it had the authentic whiff of how power can bully the circle's outcast. She told how her appeals for help to Bar and Poppy had fallen on deaf ears.

In despair, she even pled her case to the Reverend Billy Graham, whom she asked to make a call to Bush 41 on her behalf. But, according, to Sharon, Rev. Graham was too sick to do it. Ultimately, it seems, she lost her nerve about the memoir but was dumb enough to have a four-hour lunch with Killy Kelley.

Now Sharon has the worst of all worlds: no big fat book advance of her own and all the wrath of the Bush family and its many retainers.

I don't know if I believe that Shrub did coke at Camp David. However, I absolutely believe Kitty Kelley's telling the truth about her conversation with Sharon Bush.