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

A timeline of Nixon’s reactions—from the day the New York Times printed its story to the day after the Supreme Court ruling.
Ken Hughes
Thanks to the Miller Center’s collection of Secret White House Tapes, we know Chennault, a top Republican fundraiser, was a go-between for Nixon in 1968 to disrupt peace talks.
Ken Hughes, a research specialist at the University of Virginia’s Miller Center, noted Richard Nixon and Bill Clinton were each cited for obstruction of justice when Congress attempted to impeach them. “Contrary to what...Trump's lawyer is saying, presidents can be guilty of obstruction of justice,” he told the Daily News in an email.
Ken Hughes New York Daily News
"It would be incredibly self-destructive for Trump to fire Mueller, but that doesn't mean he won't do it," said Ken Hughes, a research specialist at the University of Virginia's Miller Center.
Ken Hughes New York Daily News
Presidential researcher Ken Hughes of the University of Virginia’s Miller Center says “the government is still withholding the best documents” — that is, information not just on Kennedy’s death, but about America’s foreign policy in the 1960s. “We still need to see the CIA’s internal report on the US government’s role in the overthrow of President Ngo Dinh Diem of South Vietnam,” who was assassinated less than a month before Kennedy’s death, Hughes said in an email.
Ken Hughes Los Angeles Times
"QUESTI documenti non sono " esplosivi", ma possono mettere in imbarazzo il governo americano, e anche la Cia e l'Fbi " . Non ha dubbi Ken Hughes, storico e ricercatore al Miller Center dell'Università della Virginia.
Ken Hughes La Repubblica