Despite what he perceives as his smearing, Porter said that the incident will not taint discussions of Clinton in his popular government course, “The American Presidency.”

“No, it won’t affect my treatment of President Clinton, but I am disappointed in him,” Porter said.

“Why he feels the need to just make stuff up escapes me,” he added.

Porter was not the only current Harvard faculty member to earn mention in Clinton’s book.

Kennedy School of Government professor David Gergen is described as urging Clinton to disclose documents about the Whitewater real estate scandal—advice which the former president, to his eventual chagrin, decided against.

“I was particularly gratified that he has recognized it could have saved him a very long and bruising confrontation and we never would have heard from Ken Starr or any of the other controversy,” Gergen told The Crimson yesterday.

Two former Secretaries of the Treasury—University President Lawrence H. Summers and his Treasury predecessor Robert E. Rubin ’60, currently a member of the Harvard Corporation—each garnered praise for their service on his Cabinet.

But while Clinton had uniformly kind words for Summers, he cited a few shortcomings in the range of his knowledge, most notably in the world of entertainment.

“Larry Summers, who knew everything about economics but little about popular culture, came into the Oval Office one day and remarked that he’d just had a meeting on debt relief with ‘some guy named Bono—just one name—dressed in jeans, a T-shirt, and big sunglasses,’” Clinton writes in the book.

According to Clinton, Summers nevertheless had nothing but praise for the man he didn’t know was the lead singer of U2.

“‘He came to see me about debt relief, and he knows what he’s talking about,’” Clinton quotes Summers as saying about Bono.

“I didn’t know Bono,” Summers admitted yesterday through a spokesperson. “I do now and my kids really love going backstage.”

—Staff writer Timothy J. McGinn can be reached at mcginn@fas.harvard.edu.