Description:

Nixon Richard 1913 - 1994

President Richard Nixon writes a letter of gratitude to Jack Dreyfus, founder of the Dreyfus funds





Single page TLS, 6.75" x 8.75", dated "August 24, 1971" from the Western White House at San Clemente, CA on White House stationery with embossed seal to top. Signed by Richard Nixon as "RN". Accompanied with the original White House post marked envelope, 7" x 4.75". Expected folds, paper clip ghost to upper left corner, else near fine.

President Richard Nixon types a very personal thank you letter to Jack Dreyfus. The two had a very long standing friendship. Dreyfus, considered the second most significant money manager of the last century, had contributed heavily to Nixon's campaigns both in 1960 and in 1968, and met frequently with Nixon. In Richard Nixon's letter to Dreyfus, the President thanked him for a "delightful visit to Minot Island" in Bangor, Maine, one of Dreyfus's personal residences, and a place Nixon would come to visit quite often. Jack had purposely set up his compound to accommodate presidential helicopters, saying: "We have scraped a piece of land level so that a helicopter can land there".

Nixon's letter profusely thanks Jack for offering up his home, noting, "Time and again that friendship has given us reason to be proud and grateful. Your most recent hospitality added one more instance of your generosity to an already overcrowded list''.

The two held an interesting business relationship and friendship which became highly controversial when it was revealed that a drug Dreyfus had taken for Depression - something Dreyfus heralded as a "wonder drug" -- was offered directly to Nixon to assist him with his mood disorders, depression, anxiety, and stress. In the recently published book, Arrogance of Power, Nixon's former psychotherapist, Dr. Arnold Hutschnecker, who counseled Nixon for decades, considered the President to be "neurotic." "Everyone has their share of neuroses, but there is indeed significant evidence in the presidency, well before Watergate, that Nixon on occasion behaved in a way that to ordinary people was simply not normal"; and that "Concern for Nixon's mental state was so great ... that Secretary of Defense James R. Schlesinger ordered the military not to react to orders from the White House unless they were cleared by him or the secretary of state." Nixon consumed large quantities of the drug Dilantin without a prescription, provided to him by Jack Dreyfus.

Jack, who had no medical qualifications, credited Dilantin with relieving him of chronic depression almost overnight, and he had become the leading advocate of it as a panacea for all manner of ailments. In the book, Arrogance of Power, Dreyfus recalls Nixon asking him for the drug at Key Biscayne in 1968.

"'Why don't you give me some Dilantin?' So he [Dreyfus] thought, 'What the heck, he's (going to be) President of the united States. I can't get in trouble ... So I went out to the car and got a bottle of a thousand and gave it to him. A few days later he called me and said 'Is it all right if I take two a day?' I said, 'Yes I think so'." When the author asked what Nixon wanted the Dilantin for, Dreyfus was vague. "Nixon", he said "had a lot of things ... worries".

An excellent personal letter between the two men whose relationship is beyond the obvious.

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