Washington ? President Bush’s then-chief of staff tried to convince him to fire Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld on at least two occasions in the last two years, once with the support of first lady Laura Bush, according to a new book, “State of Denial,” by journalist Bob Woodward.

The first of the attempts by Andrew Card, made in November 2004, was thwarted by Vice President Dick Cheney, a longtime friend of Rumsfeld, and Karl Rove, the White House political chief, who felt any move against Rumsfeld would be seen as an acknowledgment that the Iraq war was on the wrong course.

The second effort, made a year later, came with Laura Bush’s backing, the book claims.

Some of the findings in the book were made public Friday by Woodward’s newspaper, The Washington Post, after other news organizations acquired copies of it ahead of the official publication date. A spokesman for Simon & Schuster, the publisher, said the book was released today because of the disclosures.

On Friday, the White House did not contradict Woodward’s account of Card’s efforts to oust Rumsfeld. But Tony Snow, Bush’s spokesman, denied either of the efforts were supported by the first lady, saying her office dubbed the suggestion “flatly not true.”

Asked about the book’s contents by reporters traveling with him at a NATO meeting in Slovenia, Rumsfeld said he had not read it – or Woodward’s previous books on the Iraq war.

“I wouldn’t hold your breath on this one,” Rumsfeld said.

A new book by Bob Woodward says former White House Chief of Staff Andrew Card twice tried to convince President Bush to fire U.S. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, above. The White House did not deny the allegations about Card but said the first lady's support of such a move was not

The White House attempted to dismiss the book as a repeat of old allegations, arguments about troop levels and bitter recriminations from former administration officials whose advice was not taken.

“We’ve read this book before,” Snow said at a White House news briefing. “As a matter of fact, the average Washington memoir ought to be subtitled ‘If Only They’d Listened to Me.'”

Despite White House efforts, however, Woodward’s book – like his two preceding tomes on Bush’s stewardship of the war, “Bush at War” and “Plan of Attack” – hit Washington like a major movie opening, with details spilling out in advance and interviews scheduled by CBS’s “60 Minutes” and CNN’s “Larry King Live.”

Woodward’s previous two books were so laudatory that White House aides gave them to each other as Christmas gifts and one of them, “Plan of Attack,” was listed on the Bush campaign’s re-election Web site as recommended reading.

Woodward’s newest book, however, prompted furious backpedaling by the White House and gleeful embrace by congressional Democrats, who cited it as further evidence of the administration’s mismanagement of the war effort.

Among famous names in the book is that of Henry Kissinger, who was President Nixon’s secretary of state during the Vietnam War and who Woodward reports has been a frequent visitor at the White House, offering Bush advice on Iraq.

“Now, what’s Kissinger’s advice?” Woodward said in his “60 Minutes” interview. “In Iraq, he declared very simply, ‘Victory is the only meaningful exit strategy.’ This is so fascinating. Kissinger’s fighting the Vietnam War again, because in his view, the problem in Vietnam is we lost our will. That we didn’t stick to it.”