Hillary Rodham Clinton refused her husband's demand that she go to the hospital for a checkup following her fall Sunday due to pneumonia, according to biographer Edward Klein, the author of several books critical of the Clintons.

In an interview with Secrets, Klein quoted a Clinton family friend of three decades who claimed the couple had a "knock down, drag out" fight over her refusal to seek further medical help and testing.

"Bill was insisting that she go to the hospital. They had a knock down, dragout fight about this, even with her pneumonia, because she refused. It was her decision not to go, because she was afraid that if she went to the hospital it would make it look like she was even sicker and it would hurt her campaign even more. So it was her decision not to do that," said Klein.

Klein, the author of the upcoming Clinton book Guilty As Sin, described his source this way: "A source who is one of Hillary's friends for the last three decades."

He has often quoted family friends in his books about the Clintons. Her communications team has called him a conspiracy theorist, but episodes like Sunday's collapse by the Democratic presidential candidate bolster his reporting on her health.

"Her people," said Klein, a former New York Times editor, "have been calling people like me conspiracy theorists because for the last two years of more I've been reporting that Bill Clinton's greatest fear is that Hillary will collapse in public and reveal that she is not fit for the commander-in-chief role, and Sunday that's exactly what happened."

He also noted that top members of her team have fought pneumonia. On Monday, People Magazine confirmed that and said, "At least half a dozen senior staff were felled, including campaign manager Robby Mook."

But Klein said that the pneumonia is just one illness of several Clinton has suffered, and he said sources told him that Hillary has fallen before. "Her friend tells me that this is not infrequent," he said.

It was Bill Clinton who finally convinced Hillary to travel with a doctor, said Klein. "They had a big fight about, as they often do, but Bill is the one who insisted more than a year or so ago that she travel with a full time physician to keep an eye on her because he was afraid that this exact thing would happen, that she would stumble, fall, collapse in public and that it would be a massive black mark on her campaign."



His latest book, published by Regnery, is due out October 4.

Paul Bedard, the Washington Examiner's "Washington Secrets" columnist, can be contacted at pbedard@washingtonexaminer.com