Tricia Nixon Cox denies father struck her mother

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Patricia Nixon Cox unequivocally denies her late father, President Richard M. Nixon, struck her mother and doubts he took an unprescribed mood-altering drug in the White House.

Nixon's elder daughter, better known by her nickname, Tricia, says those and other allegations in a new biography "describe things that never took place."

"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 told The Associated Press in an interview Monday.

"My mother was not a fragile flower. She was very strong. She would have left forever if anything like that had happened," Mrs. Cox said.

Her late mother, Patricia Nixon, "was my father's strongest supporter and really believed in what he was trying to accomplish."

Mrs. Cox lives in New York with her husband, Edward Cox, a lawyer, and speaks in public very rarely.