“This woman must be arrested”

Katie Couric slammed Diane Sawyer in her new memoir, saying she was so desperate to beat her in the Morning Televised Wars that she said of her rival: “This woman must be stopped.”

This message was even put on a cushion for Couric by a colleague at “Today,” she wrote in the forthcoming book, “Going There,” which only came out in October but was obtained by The Post.

In his sensational account of his decades of cutthroat TV news, Couric, 64, admitted that the competition between them was at one point out of control.

“I loved getting under Diane’s skin,” she writes, though she freely admits that Sawyer was just as much under hers.

Couric spared no expense when discussing all of her former co-stars, including Matt Lauer and Deborah Norville, alongside the producers who helped raise her profile, as well as celebrities such as Prince Harry and Martha Stewart.

But she retains a particular venom for former “Good Morning America” ​​host Sawyer, 75, who she said was all she was not – tall, blonde, with a “full voice”. money”.

Couric wrote that her former rival Sawyer introduced herself as a dedicated family woman to score an interview with kidnapped teens Jacqueline Marris and Tamara Brooks.

But Couric’s booker ultimately won the interview by pointing out that Sawyer was a stepmother and Couric a widowed mother of two young daughters.

She also calls Sawyer’s infamous interview with Whitney Houston almost exploitative, adding: “There was a very fine line between a revealing interview and exploiting troubled, often traumatized people in the service of treats and snippets. sensational sound (eg Diane on a restless Whitney Houston about eating disorders and drug use, which resulted in the memorable comeback “crack is whack”). “

While Little, Brown and Company described the book, released October 26, to The Post as “heartfelt, hilarious, and very honest,” at times it gets blunt.

For example, when Sawyer scored a great interview with a woman who had given birth to twins at 57, Couric wondered, “I wonder who she had to blow up to get this.

Although it was a joke, she said it didn’t seem like that when it made its way into the pages of the newspapers.

“I’m pretty sure I’m speaking for Diane when I say none of us ever used a real fellatio to get an interview,” she wrote, “but we all got together. both engaged in the metaphorical genre – flattering gatekeepers, family members, and whoever stood up like a big bang.