NEW YORK -- Former McCain campaign senior adviser Nicolle Wallace says Sarah Palin's book "Going Rogue" is "based on fabrications," and that the basis for Palin’s depictions of her and former McCain campaign director Steve Schmidt as villains "took place entirely in her imagination."

The former McCain spokesperson repeatedly used the word "fiction" to describe Palin's narrative and echoed criticisms by other former McCain staffers.

"[Palin] probably has a legitimate complaint that things could have been better conceived and executed. A book about that would have been painful but not entirely unfair," Wallace told an msnbc producer in an off-camera, on-the-record interview.

Wallace took issue with Palin's version of her "CBS Evening News" interview with Katie Couric, which did not cast the former vice presidential candidate in a favorable light.

Palin described thinking the Couric interview would be lighthearted and fun. "It was supposed to be ... a working mom speaking with [another] working mom and the challenges that we have with teenage daughters," she told "The Oprah Winfrey Show" in an interview broadcast Monday.

Wallace told msnbc that this is "rationalization or justification or fiction." "We set up this interview on the day of the U.N. General Assembly, with a walk-and-talk in front of the U.N. It was never made as two working gals ... that was supposed to be to highlight her foreign policy savvy." In her book, Palin writes that the campaign selected Couric to interview her as a favor, to give the evening anchor "a career boost."

"She just has such low self-esteem," Palin recounts Wallace as saying.

Wallace said that was also "fiction," adding, "I am not someone who throws around the word 'self-esteem.' Katie Couric was selected because we did evening anchors ... I did not advocate an interview for anyone I am friends with."

"I think she fixated on me from very early on. She hated me from the beginning," continued Wallace.

It was reported on Sunday that McCain specifically asked his former aides not to do television interviews rebutting Palin's charges and to avoid escalating the feud. In an interview with the Hill newspaper, McCain reportedly said he enjoyed reading Palin's book. "I hope she sells lots of them," McCain said.