'I wonder who she b**w this time': Katie Couric's bitchy aside after bitter rival Diane Sawyer beat her to land an interview, revealed in tell-all book

• Sheila Weller's new book, The News Sorority, unveils the backstabbing and hard toil it took Katie Couric, Diane Sawyer and Christine Amanpour to get to the top
• Couric and Sawyer were bitter rivals while on GMA and the Today show
• Sawyer's arch-enemy was Barbara Walters, who referred to her as 'That Girl'

Katie Couric and Diane Sawyer were so at war with each other that a rattled Couric once bitched: 'I wonder who she blew this time to get it' when Sawyer beat her to win an interview, a new book claims.

The TV queens were bitter rivals while on ABC's Good Morning America and NBC's Today show.

And Sheila Weller's book, The News Sorority, tells how Couric was left furious when Sawyer scored an interview with Aleta St James, who aged 57 became one of the oldest women in the US to give birth to twins, in 2004. 

So furious was she that Couric was overheard saying: 'I wonder who she blew this time to get it', according to the Daily Beast, which quoted excerpts from the book

The book follows the rise of three respected, but fiercely competitive, newswomen Couric, Sawyer and CNN’s Christiane Amanpour.

And a swathe of the book details just how difficult things became between Couric and Sawyer as they competed for stories and interviews.

The Daily Beast quotes Weller's book as saying: 'When a friend of Diane's, a public figure, was being pursued by Katie's people, the wooed eminence got a call from [Diane's movie director husband] Mike Nichols, who said -- in a very nice way, to be sure -- that he and Diane would essentially cut off all social contact if their friend appeared on Today'.

The book, out in September, also reveals how Katie Couric’s big money move from Today to CBS News turned sour - and how the subsequent criticism she received over flagging ratings left the under-fire star comparing herself to Hillary Clinton.

During her 15 years on the Today show, Couric was dubbed ‘America's Sweetheart' but that was before she jumped ship to join CBS Evening News in 2006 and became the highest paid journalist in the world earning $15 million a year.

But Couric was left facing a mountain of growing criticism which she wasn't used to, according to Weller, who writes: 'In private, Katie - who had recently turned 50 - was now beginning to actively and repeatedly compare herself to the embattled but energized Hillary Clinton.

‘Katie deeply related to Hillary; she felt she was being pummeled as the first female anchor just like Clinton was being pummeled as the first major female presidential candidate.’

Behind the scenes, Couric's massive salary and supposed superstar attitude, meant she wasn't popular with other members of the team.

'The resentment was virtually immediate,' a CBS correspondent told Weller.

Weller writes how Couric became the first woman to front a network evening news program alone at CBS after wooing legendary anchor Walter Cronkite over dinner - but despite giving her his blessing, Cronkite privately thought she was too soft, according to the Daily Beast.

The anchor then managed to rile staff by appearing in the pages of glossy mag Harper's Bazaar in 2010, boasting about her great legs - all while the network was facing massive layoffs and staff were being forced to take pay cuts.

The Daily Beast quotes Weller as writing: 'Irrational though it might have been, it felt like Katie was rubbing in her privilege while so many women saw themselves, or their friends, cleaning their desks and saying goodbye.'

Sawyer, for her part, was reportedly at war with Barbara Walters, as MailOnline revealed that Weller claims Walters was exceedingly jealous of her Hollywood husband Mike Nichols and her coterie of powerful friends.

All smiles: Diane Sawyer and Katie Couric attend Regis Philbin's final show of Live! With Regis and Kelly in New York in November 2011. But the pair were bitter rivals, a new book claims
Rivals: Katie Couric hated it when Diane Sawyer beat her to a 'scoop'. She is said to have griped 'I wonder who she blew this time' when Sawyer landed an interview with 57-year-old mother of twins
Aleta St James in 2004

One ABC News staffer is quoted in the book as saying: 'Barbara and Diane were determined to kill each other -- to wipe each other off the face of the earth.'

While someone who worked with Barbara when Diane came on board, told the author: 'Barbara referred to Diane as ‘That Girl’.

'She would become very agitated’ during booking wars ‘and there would be terrible conflicts. President Clinton or whoever the person was, Diane had already put in a request and Barbara would be livid,' the source said.

Weller pays tribute to the hard work the trio have put in working in an industry that still remains sexist.

An excerpt on the book's Facebook page reads: "As reporters and communicaors of that which was beyond their control -- the news of the world -- and as women in a tremendously competitive professional arena in which their gender was an impediment, their ability to strongly control what they could control has been central to their success. Each has been self-aware and self-powering in a different way, and their careers offer lessons in female survival.'

In one anecdote recounted in the book, CBS News Executive Vice President Paul Friedman publicly muses on an open audio line about which female anchor looks worse without makeup - Sawyer or Couric.

'I was blown back in my chair,' a female producer tells Weller. 'What did it say about a man in senior management that he didn’t know he shouldn’t say that, of his boss [Katie], out loud?'

However, the book describes follows their bittter battle to the top - and how the trio have managed to rile their staff.

Indeed, the 68-year-old host of ABC's World News 'presides over a kind of imperial court like in I, Claudius'

All smiles: Diane Sawyer and Barbara Walters attend the dedication ceremony of the Barbara Walters Building ABC news headquarters in May. A new book claims Barbara referred to Diane as 'That Girl' and was jealous of her links with New York high society

Diane, who is described as using her former love, the late diplomat Richard Holbrooke to do her 'dirty work' for her while at CBS Morning News, is ultimately accused of using people and playing 'three dimensional chess while you're sleeping' as one colleague told the author that people who have known Diane for 20 years feel there's not a sincere bone in her body.

Sawyer also reportedly maneuvered her former GMA co-anchor, Charlie Gibson, out of the anchor chair at World News, as the book says: 'In the summer of 2009 Charlie had lost his momentum and Diane moved in for the kill…Charlie told people that he was called into David’s [Westin’s] office and told, ‘You’re out.’

Now about to leave World News and on a $20 million-a-year deal, Sawyer's relationship with her former protege Ben Sherwood is described as so bad that Sherwood plans to 'stick it to her' now that he's the new ABC boss.

Weller writes how Sherwood angled to run Good Morning America, an insider revealing: 'Ben, who was as cunning and seductive as Diane, really wooed Diane. He wrote her emails…‘Why did you do this?’ ‘Here is where I think you’re going wrong.’ That’s how he wormed his way in.'

However, he left the job after only six months as Sawyer had lost faith in him, telling people: 'Ben is just so weak.'

Love of her life: Diane Sawyer married Oscar winning director Mike Nicholas in 1988. The couple are seen at the Tony Awards in NYC in June 2012

Ex-love: Diane Sawyer remained close to her former boyfriend, diplomat Richard Holbrooke up until his death in December 2010. The couple are seen with Laurence Tisch during the Coro Foundation's 3rd Annual Commitment To Leadership dinner in New York in May 1987

Sherwood has now returned as president of ABC News, having charmed network chief Anne Sweeney and Disney Chairman Bob Iger. 'But now he wasn’t beholden to Diane,' says a Sherwood pal. 'With Ben, I don’t think he gives a rat’s ass' what Sawyer wants. Ben’s gonna stick it to her. She will pay dearly. She might have met her match in Ben.'

In one bitchy aside, one person said to have been closely involved with the 'advancement' of Sawyer's career, tells the author: 'She thinks she doesn't leave fingerprints, but she leaves cat paw prints on people's foreheads.'

Discussing Amanour, the book says that after the attacks of 9/11, Amanpour defied then-CNN president Walter Isaacson’s attempt 'to get all the reporters in the Middle East to skew their stories more favorably to Israel.' 

Instead she aired a critical report about the Israeli destruction of an Arab village, without including the Israeli government’s point of view. “Christiane had the power to push a piece through,” says a CNN insider.

The news queens: Sheila Weller's new book follows the highs and lows of CNN's Christine Amanpour (left) Katie Couric (second from right) and Diane Sawyer (right). They are seen all together with Barbara Walters on GMA in NYC in October 2011

Defiant: Christine Amanpour defied then-CNN president Walter Isaacson's attempt 'to get all the reporters in the Middle East to skew their stories more favorably to Israel', Sheila Weller claims

Despite this, a TV source insisted to MailOnline in June: 'This book is riddled with inaccuracies, dates and ratings that are mentioned are not correct. What's sad is that this could have been a fantastic book instead of something that has blatant misogynistic undertones. These women are fascinating, all of them have sides, of course, but all of them have worked extremely hard to get to where they are.'

While another said: 'Katie is taking this on the chin, she's spunky, she's had enough c**p written about her before, but this is really the first time that Diane has been written about in this way, she's not happy.'

An ABC source previously MailOnline: 'these claims are just too ridiculous to even consider.'