YORBA LINDA, California (CNN) -- The Nixon Library issued a statement Sunday dismissing as "ridiculously irresponsible" claims made in a biography to go on sale Monday that the former president took a mood-altering drug and beat his wife.
The allegations were detailed in a Sunday story in The New York Times about the book, The Arrogance of Power: The Secret World of Richard Nixon. Author Anthony Summers has written books about Marilyn Monroe and J. Edgar Hoover, works that also contained sensational charges.
In a statement, John Taylor, executive director of the Nixon Library & Birthplace Foundation, flatly rejected charges raised in the book and described in the newspaper. They include the allegation that Nixon hit his wife after his failed 1962 bid for governor of California, which followed his 1960 loss to John F. Kennedy for the presidency.
The author said the charge was made to him by John P. Sears, an aide to Nixon in the 1968 campaign and in his administration. Sears cited Waller Taylor, whom he said was a Nixon family lawyer, and Pat Hillings, a Nixon associate, as his sources. Taylor and Hillings are dead.
Drug's side-effects can include confusion, sleeplessness
The Nixon library's John Taylor told The New York Times that Waller Taylor was not a Nixon family lawyer, but "happened to occupy the same law firm office as former Vice President Nixon."
CNN's attempts to contact Sears, a retired lawyer who lives in Washington, were unsuccessful.
"Richard Nixon never raised a hand to Mrs. Nixon," said the Nixon library's John Taylor. "Their affection and respect for one another is well known to all who knew them. It is inconceivable that he would have struck her for any reason. No family member or close friend has ever reported witnessing such behavior. The book contains no evidence, only rumor and second- and third-hand hearsay by the dead."
Taylor said he has not seen the book, published by Viking Press, but based his statement on accounts of it in the media. "The Viking Press should be ashamed," he said.
Asked about the book's charge that Nixon hit his wife, Pat, former Nixon press secretary Ron Ziegler told CNN that "simply cannot [be] and is not true."
The newspaper quotes Jack Dreyfus, founder of the Dreyfus Fund and a promoter of the drug Dilantin, an anticonvulsant commonly prescribed for the treatment of epilepsy. Side effects can include confusion and inability to sleep, according to the drug maker, Parke-Davis.
Book contains 'unbalanced analysis'
Dreyfus told The New York Times that he gave Nixon a bottle of 1,000, 100-milligram capsules of the drug in 1968 and later gave him more.
In the Nixon Library statement, Taylor called the charge that Nixon used the drugs an "unproven idea," but acknowledged that "Dreyfus provided thousands of pills to President Nixon." Nixon, he said, accepted the pills as a "courtesy to his friend," but never ingested them. Taylor also said that Nixon, suffering from shingles in 1980, accepted a bottle of the capsules at that time, but never used them.
"Saying that a wartime commander-in-chief actually used the drug to treat a psychological condition without any evidence other than the statements of the hopeful Mr. Dreyfus is ridiculously irresponsible," Taylor said.
Said former Nixon press secretary Ziegler to CNN: "I never saw him take a pill."
Taylor dismissed Summers as one of "President Nixon's antiwar critics" and said the book's "unbalanced analysis" of the Vietnam era could not be trusted.
![[CNN Money]](http://i.cnn.net/cnn/images/main/fn.logo.newsnet.gif){kind=logo}
![[SI.com]](http://i.cnn.net/cnn/images/main/si.logo.gif){kind=logo}
(
