`NEUROTIC' NIXON TOOK MOOD DRUG IN WHITE HOUSE

Book paints picture of anxiety, depression

WASHINGTON - The late U.S. president Richard Nixon medicated himself
with a mood-altering prescription drug in the White House and,
depressed by hostile public reaction to the bombing of Cambodia in
1970, he consulted a New York psychotherapist who considered him
``neurotic,'' according to a biography to be published today.

Moreover, concern about Nixon's mental state in 1974 led secretary of
defence, James Schlesinger, to order all military units not to react to
orders from ``the White House'' unless they were cleared with him or the
secretary of state, writes Anthony Summers in The Arrogance of Power: The
Secret World of Richard Nixon.

Schlesinger confirmed the account in an interview Friday, and said the
book's description of events was the most complete and most accurate
account of his actions, which had been reported in more general terms
earlier. The book quotes him as saying, ``I am proud of my role in
protecting the integrity of the chain of command. You could say it was
synonymous with protecting the constitution.''

He confirmed Friday that that was how he felt.

The book reports the prescription drug Dilantin was given to Nixon in
1968 by Jack Dreyfus, the founder of the Dreyfus Fund and an
enthusiastic promoter and user of the drug, after the two men had
dinner with friends in Florida.

Confirming the account, Dreyfus said in a recent interview that the
drug is effective in dealing with ``fear, worry, guilt, panic, anger
and related emotions, irritability, rage, mood, depression, violent
behaviour, hyper-glycemia, alcohol, anorexia, bulimia and binge
eating, cardiac arrhythmia, muscular disorders.''

Dreyfus said in the interview he gave Nixon a bottle of 1,000
100-milligram capsules, ``when his mood wasn't too good.'' He said
Nixon scoffed when he said the pills should be prescribed by a doctor,
and he later gave the president another 1,000 capsules. In the book,
Dreyfus says Nixon told him: ``To heck with the doctor.''

Dr. Richard Friedman, director of the psychopharmacology clinic at
Cornell medical school in New York, said in a recent interview that
Dilantin was properly used to prevent convulsions and anxiety, but has
been discredited for psychiatric use.

He said Dilantin has ``potentially very serious side-effect risks,
like change of mental status, person becoming confused, loss of
memory, irritability, (and) definitely could have an effect on
cognitive function.''

Nixon's pre-presidency treatments by Dr. Arnold Hutschnecker have been
reported. But the White House and Nixon allies steadfastly denied
Nixon was treated once he became president.

Robbyn Swan, Summers' wife and collaborator, said in a telephone interview
that she had interviewed Hutschnecker in 1995 and 1997. Speaking from their
home near Waterford, Ireland, she played a tape recording of part of an
interview with Hutschnecker, in which he said of Nixon: ``He didn't have a
serious psychiatric diagnosis. He wasn't psychotic. He had no pathology,
but he had a good portion of neurotic symptoms: anxiety'' and sleeplessness.

Hutschnecker, who is 102 and living in Sherman, Conn., declined
through a caregiver to be interviewed.