Book: The Palace Guard

Overview
Published in 1974, The Palace Guard is Dan Rather and Gary Paul Gates’s sharp, ground-level chronicle of Richard Nixon’s presidency as seen through the duel between a secretive White House and an increasingly assertive press. Drawing on Rather’s front-row reporting for CBS News and Gates’s inside knowledge of television journalism, the book follows the rise and erosion of an imperial presidency whose inner circle styled itself as a disciplined protective cordon, only to become ensnared in the logic of secrecy, manipulation, and cover-up that culminated in Watergate.

The circle around Nixon
The “palace guard” refers to Nixon’s tight cadre of aides, most prominently H. R. Haldeman and John Ehrlichman, often dubbed the Berlin Wall, along with figures like John Mitchell, Charles Colson, and press secretary Ron Ziegler. Rather and Gates trace how they centralized information, choreographed presidential appearances, and built a siege mentality that shielded Nixon from dissenting views. The guard’s ethos, shaped by advertising, law, and campaign warfare, prized message control and operational loyalty over deliberation, turning the West Wing into a command post where managing images eclipsed grappling with consequences.

Media management as governing principle
The book shows how Nixon’s team sought to outflank traditional journalism by mastering television’s rhythms. Rather recounts meticulously staged events, prepackaged news, and efforts to bypass the Washington press corps through handpicked audiences and controlled formats. This was not merely tactical; it was a theory of power in a media age. The authors argue that once messaging became synonymous with policy, pressure to eliminate leaks, neutralize critics, and punish perceived enemies grew intense, setting the conditions for extra-legal schemes and clandestine operations.

From the campaign to Watergate
The narrative moves from the 1968 and 1972 campaigns to the slow unspooling of Watergate. Rather and Gates sketch the culture at the Committee to Re-elect the President, where competitive zeal and insulation from oversight encouraged reckless ventures. They follow the break-in’s aftermath, the shifting official stories, and the widening circle of damage as congressional investigations, court proceedings, and the press pressed for answers. The revelation of the taping system and the Saturday Night Massacre appear not as isolated shocks but as inflection points in a long struggle between executive control and constitutional accountability.

Clashes with the press
A recurring thread is the day-to-day combat between the administration and reporters. Rather describes briefing-room theatrics, attempts to freeze out skeptical correspondents, and personal confrontations that symbolized a deeper argument over who gets to define reality in American politics. The White House saw journalists as adversaries with their own power to frame events; the press saw itself as testing official narratives that too often shifted under scrutiny. The guard’s preference for loyalty tests and message discipline, the authors suggest, blinded it to the value of scrutiny that might have exposed problems earlier and limited the damage.

Portraits and methods
The book’s portraits are unsentimental: Haldeman the enforcer and gatekeeper; Ehrlichman the legal strategist; Mitchell the political general; Colson the practitioner of hard-edged tactics; Ziegler the voice of the line of the day. Rather and Gates keep the lens tight on process, how memos moved, how decisions were staged, how denial followed revelation, showing a system that rewarded initiative in managing appearances while punishing candor.

Significance
The Palace Guard reads as both history and caution. It captures the peculiar momentum of a presidency that believed media mastery could substitute for doubt and debate, only to find that secrecy breeds its own undoing. By tying the mechanics of television news to the mechanics of executive power, Rather and Gates illuminate how modern presidencies can be consumed by the very apparatus built to protect them, and how a republic relies on friction, press, courts, and Congress, to prevent the guard from becoming the government itself.