Author of Sarah Palin Book Calls Her 'Vindictive Hypocrite' and 'Utter Fraud'

Joe McGinniss, author of the upcoming The Rogue: Searching for the Real Sarah Palin, which alleges that Palin used cocaine and marijuana, had a one-night stand with basketball star Glen Rice and a long-term affair with her husband's business partner, spoke about the ex-governor on NBC's Today show Thursday.

McGinniss, who spent four months last year interviewing Palin's official and personal associates while living in a rented home right next to Palin's residence on the shore of Lake Lucille in Wasilla, Alaska, said Palin is an absolute and utter fraud.

At best, she is a hypocrite. At worst, she is a vindictive hypocrite. The thing that I found that really surprised me was that the people who know her best like her least, McGinniss said, according to a Yahoo News report.

According to the book, nine months before her marriage to Todd Palin, Sarah Heath spent a night with Rice -- later an NBA all-star -- in her sister's dorm room at the University of Alaska. McGinniss claims to have a quote from Rice confirming this.

Palin allegedly smoked marijuana with one of her college professors and snorted cocaine while on a snowmobiling trip with her husband. Her alleged six-month affair was with Brad Hanson, who used to be Todd Palin's business associate.

Sarah made me a character, McGinniss said. She's a phenomenon. I said that to Todd when he came tromping across my lawn to confront me for living next door. He said 'Why are you writing about her anyway?' I said, 'Well Todd, I've been writing about politics since 1968. Your wife is a phenomenon. There's been no one like her in American politics before, no one who has come from nowhere to get so far.'

I was surprised at Sarah's reaction, but it taught me something very interesting. She overreacts. She has no modulation in her responses to stress. In other words, she freaks out, he continued.

McGinniss said Rice told him of his tryst with Palin: In a short time, we got to know a lot about one another. It was all done in a respectful way, nothing hurried. She was a gorgeous woman, super nice. I was blown away by her. Afterward, she was a big crush that I had.

Todd Palin has slammed McGinniss in a statement released following the allegations, saying that the author has been relentlessly stalking my family to the point of moving in right next door to us to harass us and spy on us. He traffics in innuendo and falsehoods.

He's spent the last year interviewing marginal figures with an axe to grind in order to churn out a hit piece to satisfy his own creepy obsession with my wife, Palin said. I'd ask the fathers and husbands of America to consider our privacy when one summer day I found this guy on the deck of the rental property, just 18 feet away next door to us, staring like a creep at my wife while she mowed the lawn in her shorts, unbeknownst to her that he was prying.

McGinniss said he doesn't think Palin would run for president in 2012. She's going to take the path of least resistance. I don't think that she's going to run for president, he said.