Both daughters of the late President Richard Nixon have denied claims in a new biography that he beat his wife, Pat. The book also claims that Mr Nixon, who was forced to resign in 1974 over the Watergate scandal, took a mood-altering drug recommended by a friend.
The claims are made in The Arrogance of Power: The Secret World of Richard Nixon by Anthony Summers, who lives in Co Waterford.
According to the book, Mr Nixon struck his wife around the time he lost his bid to be governor of California in 1962. Mr Summers writes that a Los Angeles reporter, Bill van Petten, who is now dead, told an unidentified friend that Mr Nixon beat his wife so badly either just before or after the election that she could not go out the next day.
A retired Washington lawyer, Mr John Sears, who worked in Mr Nixon's 1968 presidential campaign, also told Mr Summers that he had been told "that Nixon had hit her [Mrs Nixon] in 1962 and that she had threatened to leave him over it . . . I'm not talking about a smack. He blackened her eye." Mr Sears said he had been told of the beating by two lawyers who are now dead
Mr Sears cited the investigative journalist Seymour Hersh as a source for another beating in 1974 in San Clemente, when Mr Nixon allegedly "attacked" his wife and she had to be treated at a hospital.
Ms Patricia Nixon Cox, the former president's elder daughter, contacted Associated Press to deny the allegations. "Because I lived at home with them and my sister, I can state unconditionally that at no time during 1962, or ever, did my father ever strike my mother or did my mother ever have physical signs or bruises of the type claimed in this book," she said.
"My mother was not a fragile flower. She was very strong. She would have left for ever if anything like that had happened."
The younger daughter, Ms Julie Nixon Eisenhower, also denied the allegations through the director of the Nixon Library, Mr John Taylor.
Mr Summers also claims that Mr Nixon used the prescription drug Dilantin, given to him in 1968 by Mr Jack Dreyfus, founder of the Dreyfus investment fund. Mr Dreyfus has told the New York Times that he gave Mr Nixon bottles with 2,000 capsules of the drug when "his mood was not too good". The drug was effective in dealing with "fear, worry, guilt, panic, anger and related emotions", he said.
Mr Richard Schlesinger, who was Mr Nixon's secretary of defence, has confirmed Mr Summers's account that he was so concerned about the president's mental state in 1974 that he ordered all military units not to react to orders from "the White House" unless they were cleared with him or the secretary of state, Dr Henry Kissinger.
The book quotes Mr Schlesinger 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."
Mrs Nixon Cox said that while she had no direct knowledge of what medication her father took, "I did have personal and daily contact with him. What I do know is that his personality and his mood did not change. He was consistent."