BOOK SAYS NIXON TOOK MOOD-ALTERING DRUG AS PRESIDENT

WASHINGTON, Aug. 25 -- President 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 on Monday.

Moreover, concern about Mr. Nixon's mental state in 1974 led the secretary
of defense, James R. 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."

Mr. Schlesinger confirmed the account in an interview today, 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 today that that
was how he felt.

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

Confirming the account, Mr. Dreyfus said in an interview this week that it
is effective in dealing with "fear, worry, guilt, panic, anger and related
emotions, irritability, rage, mood, depression, violent behavior,
hyperglycemia, alcohol, anorexia, bulimia and binge eating, cardiac
arrhythmia, muscular disorders."

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

Dr. Richard A. Friedman, director of the psychopharmacology clinic at
Cornell medical school, said in an interview Thursday that Dilantin was
properly used to prevent convulsions, and was discredited for psychiatric
use. He said it could be used to prevent anxiety, but other drugs were
better. He said Dilantin has "potentially very serious side effect risks,
like change of mental status, person becoming confused, loss of memory,
irritability, definitely could have an effect on cognitive function."

Mr. Nixon's pre-presidency treatments by Dr. Arnold A. Hutschnecker have
been reported. But the White House and Nixon allies steadfastly denied that
Mr. Nixon was treated once he became president. Robbyn Swan, Mr. Summers'
wife and collaborator, said in a telephone interview that she had
interviewed Dr. Hutschnecker in 1995 and 1997, and that he had indicated
that while he had seen Mr. Nixon rarely while he was president, they
maintained contact, apparently by telephone.

Speaking from their home near Waterford, Ireland, she played a tape
recording of part of an interview with Dr. Hutschnecker, in which he said
of Mr. 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.

Dr. Hutschnecker, who is 102 and living in Sherman, Conn., declined to be
interviewed today. Juan Gonzales, who was caring for Dr. Hutschnecker, said
the doctor would not give any more interviews and "could hardly speak." Ms.
Swan said that when she last saw the doctor a few months ago, he was in a
wheelchair and did not speak, although he agreed to be photographed for a
television documentary by the History Channel and the BBC.

"The Arrogance of Power," which Viking will publish and is planning to sell
for $29.95, is generally hostile in its treatment of Mr. Nixon.

It restates, with much new detail, the accusation that Mr. Nixon's 1968
presidential campaign sought to persuade South Vietnam's President Nguyen
Van Thieu not to agree to President Lyndon Johnson's pleas that he agree to
join peace talks in Paris with the United States, North Vietnam and the
Viet Cong.

In particular, Mr. Summers, an Irish journalist, cites a document the
Federal Bureau of Investigation released to him, recording a wiretap of
South Vietnam's ambassador to Washington, Bui Diem. It reported that "Mrs.
Anna Chennault contacted Vietnamese ambassador, Bui Diem, and advised that
she had received a message from her boss (not further identified), which
her boss wanted her to give personally to the ambassador. She said that
message was that the ambassador is to 'hold on, we are gonna win' and that
her boss also said 'hold on, he understands all of it.' She repeated that
this is the only message 'he said please tell your boss to hold on.' She
advised that her boss had just called from New Mexico."

On that day, Nov. 2, 1968, Gov, Spiro T. Agnew, the vice-presidential
candidate, was in Albuquerque. Mr. Summers, citing declassified White House
documents, suggests that Mr. Agnew himself telephoned Mrs. Chennault, a
well-connected Washington hostess and the widow of Claire Lee Chennault,
commander of the Flying Tigers in China. He concludes "Nixon's running mate
acted for no one but Nixon." He also reports that Mrs. Chennault told the
ambassador's secretary after the election that she had talked to Mr. Nixon
about her role.

The most provocative charge in the book is that Mr. Nixon beat his wife,
Pat. Here the author relies on second-hand accounts. He writes of various
journalists being told of beatings. His most specific account comes from
John P. Sears, an aide to Nixon in the 1968 campaign and early in his
administration, describing an event that may have happened just after Mr.
Nixon's 1962 defeat for governor of California.

The book quotes Mr. Sears as saying a Nixon family lawyer, Waller Taylor,
"told me that Nixon had hit her in 1962 and that she threatened to leave
him over it. . . . I'm not talking about a smack. . . . He blackened her
eye. . . . I had heard about that from Pat Hillings as well as from the
family lawyer." Mr. Sears, a retired lawyer in Washington, confirmed today
that he had told Mr. Summers about Mr. Taylor and Mr. Hillings. Mr. Taylor
and Mr. Hillings, a longtime Nixon associate, are both dead.

Julie Nixon Eisenhower, advised of the accusation, asked John Taylor,
director of the Nixon Library in Yorba Linda, Calif., to respond on her behalf.

He said: "It cannot possibly be true. It is utterly inconceivable. Anyone
who knows and worked with President Nixon knows first of all that he could
not have done it, second of all that he would not have done it, and third
of all that had he done it, there are innumerable people who would not have
spoken to him and yet remained active in his life and in Mrs. Nixon's life
until their deaths and beyond."

He added that "Mrs. Eisenhower this afternoon confirmed that she and Tricia
and her mother were at home watching television and that later that day Mr.
Nixon came home and they spent the evening together." And he said that
Waller Taylor was not the Nixon family lawyer but "happened to occupy the
same law firm office as former Vice President Nixon."

Ms. Swan said Dr. Hutschnecker told her he felt comfortable describing his
consultations with Mr. Nixon because he had once told the president he
wanted to write about it, and Mr. Nixon had replied, "only when I am six
feet under." Mr. Nixon died in 1994.

When Mr. Nixon left the White House after resigning in 1974, a letter from
Dr. Hutschnecker was found in his desk. The letter, sent at the height of
the Watergate disclosures on July 3, 1973, said, "Once doubts have been
planted in the minds of people, neither legal, political or PR-defense
regardless of how well presented, can fully wipe out all the doubts."

The next day in an Op-Ed article in The New York Times, the doctor wrote
"both a clinical as well as a psychoanalytically oriented physician should
take part in the policy-making of our federal or local governments." He
said they would be able to "raise their voice when human ambition and greed
or drives for an uninhibited use of power seem to be getting out of control."