Nixon, now 62, still ailing

Press, Volume CXV, Issue 33739, 11 January 1975, Page 14

Nixon, now 62, still ailing

(N.Z.P. A.-Reuter—Copyright)

SAN CLEMENTE (California), January 10.

The former President Nixon spent his sixty-second birthday in seclusion at his Pacific Ocean villa yesterday, and a staunch supporter said he was suffering from new leg pain, fatigue, and deteriorating eyesight.

Rabbi Baruch Korff, who organised the Committee for Fairness to the President before Mr Nixon’s resignation over Watergate in August, said that the former President was suffering pain in his previously sound right leg and was extremely thin. Mr Nixon’s physician, Dr John Lungren, refused to comment on whether the phlebitis swelling had spread to the right leg, pronounced sound when a blood clot operation was performed on his left leg in October. A cardio-vascular surgeon here said that the clip to prevent blood clots moving to Mr Nixon’s heart and lungs was placed in his upper left thigh and would not help if blood clotting began in the right leg.

PRESS CONFERENCE Rabbi Korff held a press conference at a nearby hotel yesterday after spending several hours with Mr Nixon over the last three days. He said that Mr Nixon was "very glad” to hear that Watergate trial judge, John Sirica, had ordered the release from prison of the former White House counsel, John Dean, Mr Nixon’s lawyer, Herbert Kalmbach, and the deputy head of the Reelection Committee, Jeb McGruder.

Shortly after the Rabbi’s press conference Mr Dean and Mr Kalmbach flew in to Los Angeles to be greeted by their families.

> Rabbi Korff said that thour sands of birthday cards had - poured into the former Westi ern White House for Mr , Nixon. Special times of the ■ day were set aside for Mr ; Nixon to receive telephone ; calls from well-wishers. He said of Mr Nixon: “I ■ have never seen him so thin , as he is now.” He said that > Mr Nixon complained of pains I in his right leg. 1 Mr Nixon, who was under ■ a strict regime of blood- ; thinning drugs to reduce his leg swelling, was reading i books on George Washingi ton and Theodore Roosevelt ; which had been given to him i for Christmas. “But his eyes tire. He reads > for 15 to 20 minutes and puts : the book aside,” Rabbi Korff said.