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

According to Nixon expert Ken Hughes of the University of Virginia’s Miller Center of Public Affairs, there was no question in the White House, Congress, or the Supreme Court after Watergate that a former president could be prosecuted for crimes committed when he wielded the powers of the presidency. In fact, President Gerald R. Ford conceded as much when he pardoned his former boss.
Ken Hughes UVA Today
The last time an incumbent president withdrew from a reelection campaign was 1968. On March 31, under immense stress from the failure of his Vietnam War policy, President Lyndon Johnson told a national TV audience that he would neither seek nor accept the nomination of the Democratic Party for another four years in the White House. Vice President Hubert Humphrey would win the nomination, as all hell broke loose on the Chicago streets outside the convention, during one of the most turbulent years in U.S. political history. By late October, as Humphrey gained ground in the polls against Republican Richard Nixon, LBJ learned that a woman by the name of Anna Chennault was interfering in his 11th hour bid to initiate peace talks with the North Vietnamese government in Paris. The person who orchestrated this dirty trick was Nixon himself. In this episode, University of Virginia historian and researcher Ken Hughes tells the story of the Chennault Affair.
Ken Hughes History As It Happens
Ken Hughes, a historian of former President Richard Nixon at the University of Virginia, said the ruling in Trump “would have granted President Nixon presumptive immunity for his corrupt, authoritarian, and plainly politically motivated attempt to use the IRS against financial contributors to the Democratic Party and the chairman of the Democratic National Committee, Larry O’Brien.”
Ken Hughes Tax Notes
Join Harry as he speaks with author Ken Hughes about his book, Fatal Politics: The Nixon Tapes, the Vietnam War, and the Casualties of Reelection and the recent passing of Henry Kissinger.
Ken Hughes Le Show
As secretary of state, Kissinger helped Richard Nixon delay withdrawal from Vietnam to win re-election
Ken Hughes The Messenger
This conversation with University of Virginia Miller Center historian Ken Hughes aired on C-SPAN's American History TV on Nov. 25. Hughes discusses his new research into President John F. Kennedy's role in the coup d'état and assassination of South Vietnam's president Ngo Dinh Diem in early Nov. 1963, just three weeks before JFK was assassinated in Dallas.
Ken Hughes History As It Happens