Former Secretary of the Nobel Peace Prize Committee Geir Lundestad notes in his newly published memoirs that the body “didn't achieve what it had hoped for” when it gave Barack Obama the benefit of the doubt and conferred the prestigious award on him in 2009.

Geir Lundestad, director at the institute for 25 years, said that he and the committee had unanimously decided to grant the award to Mr. Obama just after his election in 2009 more in hopes of aiding the American president to achieve his goals on nuclear disarmament, rather than in recognition of what Mr. Obama had already accomplished.

The decision was met with criticism in the U.S. Mr. Lundestad, writing in his memoir, said even Mr. Obama himself had been surprised. "Even many of Obama's supporters believed that the prize was a mistake," he says. "In that sense the committee didn't achieve what it had hoped for."

He also reveals that Mr. Obama considered not going to pick up the award in Norway's capital Oslo. His staff inquired whether other winners had skipped the ceremony but found this had happened only on rare occasions.

Mr. Lundestad served as the committee's influential, but non-voting secretary from 1990 to 2015. He has broken with the tradition of the secretive committee, whose members rarely discuss proceedings.