Laura Bush Poisoning Claim Unlikely, Homeland Security Expert Says

Were George W. Bush and Laura Bush poisoned at a 2007 European conference of world leaders as Mrs. Bush asserts in her new memoir? Maybe not.

In the new book, "Spoken from the Heart," Mrs. Bush said that she and the president were poisoned while attending a G8 summit in Germany, but now, a former top aide says that's unlikely.

According to Frances Townsend, Bush's own Homeland Security adviser, there was "no indication" that the president and his wife consumed intentionally poisoned food.

"The truth was ultimately we didn't really believe there was a basis to think they were poisoned, but you can understand - you would have thought us not competent if we hadn't considered the possibility and looked at it," Townsend said in an interview with CNN's Wolf Blitzer.

But the former First Lady painted a grim picture of the incident in her book:

"[O]ne 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."

According to Townsend, doctors who treated the delegation, "believed it was just a virus, a local virus."

Despite the final prognosis of the doctors, Mrs. Bush still didn't seem entirely convinced in her memoir, writing: "We never learned if any other delegations became ill, or if ours, mysteriously, was the only one."