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

Kennedy’s position on Diem’s assassination is still debated, said Ken Hughes, a historian at the University of Virginia’s Miller Center.
Ken Hughes Associated Press
Secret documents detailing who knew what about the assassination of US President John F Kennedy have been made public, although some have had to be held back for further review. Ken Hughes is a historian and journalist at the University of Virginia's Miller Centre.
Ken Hughes ABC (Australia)
“I’m astonished at the sheer number of documents,” said Ken Hughes, a researcher with the University of Virginia’s Miller Center of Public Policy. Hughes said a significant amount of the documents are likely to focus on assassin Lee Harvey Oswald as well as clandestine efforts to overthrow foreign governments and kill their leaders.
Ken Hughes New York Daily News
To experts like Hughes, who studies the presidency, the records when they are released are likely to reveal juicy tidbits about American history that are unlikely to have much to do with the assassination itself. “The main thing I get out of these documents is great information about covert operations during the Kennedy administration,” Hughes said. “These covert operations were to overthrow and assassinate Fidel Castro of Cuba. They weren’t to overthrow and assassinate the president of the United States.”
Ken Hughes Los Angeles Times
“The odds that this 1 percent will provide proof of a conspiracy are slim,” Ken Hughes, a presidential researcher at the University of Virginia, told Boston.com. “But they will fill in some important details.”
Ken Hughes Boston.com
Miller Center expert Ken Hughes is interviewed on BBC Radio.
Ken Hughes BBC Radio