Experts

Ken Hughes

Fast Facts

  • Bob Woodward called Hughes "one of America's foremost experts on secret presidential recordings"
  • Has spent two decades mining the Secret White House Tapes
  • Expertise on Lyndon Johnson, Richard Nixon, Secret White House Tapes, abuses of presidential power, Watergate, Vietnam War

Areas Of Expertise

  • Foreign Affairs
  • American Defense and Security
  • Governance
  • Leadership
  • Political Parties and Movements
  • Politics
  • The Presidency

Bob Woodward has called Ken Hughes “one of America's foremost experts on secret presidential recordings, especially those of Lyndon Johnson and Richard Nixon.” Hughes has spent two decades mining the Secret White House Tapes and unearthing their secrets. As a journalist writing in the pages of the New York Times Magazine, Washington Post, and Boston Globe Magazine, and, since 2000, as a researcher with the Miller Center, Hughes’s work has illuminated the uses and abuses of presidential power involved in (among other things) the origins of Watergate, Jimmy Hoffa’s release from federal prison, and the politics of the Vietnam War. 

Hughes has been interviewed by the New York Times, CBS News, CNN, PBS NewsHour, Los Angeles Times, Associated Press and other news organizations. He is the author of Chasing Shadows: The Nixon Tapes, the Chennault Affair, and the Origins of Watergate and Fatal Politics: The Nixon Tapes, the Vietnam War and the Casualties of Reelection.

Hughes is currently at work on a book about President John F. Kennedy’s hidden role in the coup plot that resulted in the overthrow and assassination of another president, Ngo Dinh Diem of South Vietnam. 

 

Ken Hughes News Feed

Schoolchildren can easily grasp Trump’s high crime, in contrast to the complex, Machiavellian plot immortalized on the tape that led to Nixon’s downfall. It will be harder to explain to them why congressional Republicans decided to hold Nixon accountable, but not Trump.
Ken Hughes The Conversation
After Richard Nixon won the 1968 presidential election, he got to work on a Republican promise to “attack the root causes of poverty,” agreeing to support a basic income payment, tied to work. “But, you know, it cost a lot so he really wasn’t for it and just expected it to die in committee, and it did,” said Ken Hughes, a historian at the University of Virginia’s Miller Center.
Ken Hughes Marketplace
The bet is inspired by Richard Nixon's 1968 campaign, the first in which law and order was a major theme. "It worked for him, because Democrats had controlled the White House and the two houses of Congress for eight years and there was a significant degree of disturbance for many years," says Ken Hughes, the Nixon-era expert at the University of Virginia.
Ken Hughes O Globo
Watergate expert Ken Hughes is interviewed by France2 Television.
Ken Hughes France2 TV
"There is no good evidence that Nixon knew about the Watergate break-in before the burglars got caught, nor is there any good evidence that he knew that anyone from his reelection campaign was planning to bug Democratic headquarters," said Ken Hughes, a historian at the University of Virginia’s Miller Center and an expert on Nixon’s recordings.
Ken Hughes PolitiFact
After Watergate exposed how Richard Nixon used the federal government to serve his personal political aims, Congress created a network of inspectors general to monitor federal agencies and bring to light abuse of power, waste and fraud. Inspectors general were designed to act independently of the President and other political appointees, says Ken Hughes, a historian at the University of Virginia’s Miller Center.
Ken Hughes TIME