Updated

Conservative sage Dr. Ben Carson is claiming the White House was offended by his now-famous keynote address at the 2013 National Prayer Breakfast and asked at the time for an apology call to President Obama -- which he didn’t make.

The anecdote is found in Carson’s upcoming book “One Nation: What We Can All Do to Save America’s Future.”

Carson, who became a conservative sensation after the address, was highly critical of the direction of the country though he never blamed the president, who was sitting just a few feet away.

“He did not appear to be hostile or angry,” Carson wrote in the book.

“But within a matter of minutes after the conclusion of the program, I received a call from some of the prayer breakfast organizers saying that the White House was upset and requesting that I call the president and apologize for offending him. I said that I did not think that he was offended and that I didn’t think that such a call was warranted.”

The passage was verified Tuesday by publisher Sentinel, a division of Penguin Group (USA).

Carson, a former director of pediatric neurosurgery at Johns Hopkins University, also suggests in the book he has no plans to run for president in 2016 unless called by God.

However, he has placed third in two recent straw polls and is being courted by the well-funded National Draft Ben Carson for President Committee. The committee has already raised $4 million toward a Carson bid for the Republican nomination and has collected 200,000 signatures for a petition to get him to join the race.

John Philip Sousa IV, the group's national chairman, told FoxNews.com last week that members are nudging Carson on an almost daily basis, sending along petition-drive updates and hundreds of "clamorings" for him to run.

Even if Carson did decide to run, an important question is whether he can assemble a campaign operation.

Sousa told FoxNews.com that his group has offers out now to three regional political directors while assembling volunteers, upgrading technology and performing other key tasks associated with building a campaign infrastructure.