A former senior economic adviser to George Bush has made an astonishing attack on the president, saying that he was so disengaged in cabinet meetings that he "was like a blind man in a roomful of deaf people".

Paul O'Neill, who was Mr Bush's treasury secretary, makes his comments in an interview with the CBS show 60 Minutes.

The programme will be broadcast tomorrow.

It is his first interview since Mr Bush sacked him a little over a year ago.

Mr O'Neill sheds light on the president's decision-making process, suggesting that there was an almost total absence of dialogue with his advisers.

The president, he says, encouraged neither the free flow of ideas nor open debate.

"There is no discernible connection," he tells CBS.

Mr Bush's lack of engagement left advisers with "little more than hunches about what the president might think".

Mr O'Neill recalls his own first personal meeting with Mr Bush, during which the president failed to ask him a single question.

"I went in with a long list of things to talk about and, I thought, to engage him on. I was surprised it turned out to be me talking and the president just listening. It was mostly a monologue."