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

Nixon was hardly above using foreign policy to distract the public from impeachment and try to burnish his leadership: As Walter Isaacson writes in his biography of Henry Kissinger, Nixon was “obsessed” with ending the Arab oil embargo, “a coup he thought might bring some relief from Watergate.” Even when the president gave vent to his worst impulses, he was restrained or deflected not just by his seasoned secretary of state, but also by a formidable Cold War-era policy-making machinery and bureaucracy. Although Watergate distracted Nixon from his presidential duties, historian Ken Hughes of the Miller Center told me via e-mail, “It never came close to crippling the functioning of the federal government.”
Ken Hughes Blooomberg Opinion
Ken Hughes, a researcher with the University of Virginia's Miller Center, sees similarities between the 1974 impeachment effort and the present. Recent closed-door depositions of witnesses that led to public hearings before the House Intelligence Committee are comparable to Watergate-era House Judiciary Committee executive sessions held behind closed doors that did not become public for several weeks, Hughes told the Washington Examiner.
Ken Hughes Washington Examiner
Pulitzer Prize-winning cartoonist Pat Oliphant and his work were the subjects of discussion at the University of Virginia, which had just acquired his cartoon collection. Speakers included presidential scholars, including Ken Hughes and Kent Germany from UVA’s Miller Center. They focused on the presidencies from Lyndon B. Johnson to Ronald Reagan.
Ken Hughes C-SPAN
Since the lawmakers on the committee have already heard from all the witnesses who are expected to testify, the public hearings are intended to present their testimony to the public on live television. Ken Hughes, a research specialist at the University of Virginia’s Miller Center with expertise in Watergate and presidential abuses of power, said the importance of public hearings should not be underestimated. “The attention of voters and citizens will finally be focused on these particular set of facts—what the President did and when, how his own aides witnessed or learned about these activities,” said Hughes. “It will give the public an opportunity to size up these witnesses for themselves.”
Ken Hughes TIME
While Collins and other Republicans accuse Democrats of underhandedness and of rewriting impeachment history, Ken Hughes, an expert on Watergate with the University of Virginia’s Miller Center, said Thursday that anyone who thinks closed-door sessions are unprecedented in the process is “just making history up.” “Most of the evidence for Nixon’s impeachment was presented to the committee behind closed doors in executive session,” Hughes said. “The head of the inquiry, House Judiciary Committee chairman Peter Rodino, said secrecy was necessary to avoid prejudicing the rights of defendants in ongoing criminal trials related to Watergate and to avoid defaming the president and prejudicing his impeachment case and potential Senate trial.”
Ken Hughes Courthouse News Service
Nixon sought help from a foreign government 50 years ago. Trump is trying the same thing, and it may cost him the presidency.
Ken Hughes The Conversation