New Nixon Biography Gives Salacious Details

N E W   Y O R K, Aug. 29 -- A new biography of Richard M. Nixon, which describes the nation’s 37th president as a user of mood-altering drugs who once beat his wife, is being characterized as fiction by Nixon backers.

“It is not history,” said John Taylor, executive director of the Nixon Library and Birthplace Foundation in Yorba Linda, Calif. “The book is an act of politics.”

The biography sparked debate about the inner workings of the man who left the White House in disgrace in 1974, and died in 1994, his legacy still largely unsettled.

Irish journalist Anthony Summers, the author of Arrogance of Power: The Secret World of Richard Nixon, stood by his reporting in a chat with ABCNEWS.com. Summers noted that Taylor “flatly refused” to be interviewed.

The more salacious details in Summers’ book include allegations the former president hit his wife, Pat, was treated by a New York psychotherapist for depression after making the controversial decision to bomb Cambodia in 1970, and took Dilantin to treat his mood swings.

Taylor said the book’s publisher, Viking Press, “should be ashamed” to publish such allegations of abuse. “Richard Nixon never in over 50 years of marriage ever lifted a hand to his wife,” Taylor said. Through a spokesman, President Nixon’s daughter, Julie Eisenhower, called the charge “inconceivable.”

Taylor also said that while Jack Dreyfus, a longtime Nixon friend and a strong proponent of taking the drug Dilantin, gave Nixon the medication, but the president promptly “threw the pills away.”

Up for Debate

The new biography suggests that Nixon suffered from mental illness throughout his presidency and that it may have hurt his ability to make clear decisions.

The allegations in Arrogance of Power are based in part on revealing interviews with Nixon’s former psychotherapist, Dr. Arnold Hutschnecker, who counseled Nixon for decades and considered the president to be “neurotic.”