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

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
November 22 marks the 60th anniversary of a dark day in American history. President John F. Kennedy was assassinated in Dallas. Less well remembered is what happened 20 days earlier. In South Vietnam, opponents of the autocratic president Ngo Dinh Diem ousted him from power and murdered Diem and his brother. University of Virginia Miller Center historian Ken Hughes discusses his new research revealing President Kennedy’s central role in the coup that toppled a U.S. ally in Southeast Asia.
Ken Hughes Washington Times
University of Virginia presidential recordings expert Ken Hughes talked about President Kennedy’s mystique and his White House tapes with Martin Di Caro, host of the Washington Times' “History As It Happens” podcast.
Ken Hughes C-SPAN
Historian Ken Hughes, a renowned expert on secret presidential recordings and author of two books on Richard Nixon’s criminality, talks about the ongoing fascination with Watergate, and whether comedy or satire is as effective as drama in portraying the extraordinary events that wrecked Nixon's presidency.
Ken Hughes History As It Happens
If the White House had gone public with this information, the outrage might also have swung the election to Humphrey. But Johnson hesitated. “This is treason,” he said, as quoted in Ken Hughes’s excellent "Chasing Shadows: The Nixon Tapes, the Chennault Affair, and the Origins of Watergate." “It would rock the world.”
Ken Hughes The Nation
Ken Hughes, a researcher at the Miller Center of the University of Virginia, whose book “Chasing Shadows” chronicled the Nixon campaign’s efforts to impede peace talks, said Mr. Nixon had a strong lead in the polls over Mr. Humphrey in mid-September. By mid-October, Mr. Nixon’s lead was down to eight percentage points. Then, days before the election, President Lyndon B. Johnson ordered a halt to the bombing of North Vietnam, and the news media began reporting chatter of looming talks to end the war.
Ken Hughes The New York Times