Experts

Ken Hughes

Research Specialist
Ken Hughes CV.pdf

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. 

 

Featured Publications

Fatal Politics
Fatal Politics

Ken Hughes

Chasing Shadows
Chasing Shadows

Ken Hughes

Ken Hughes News Feed

screenshot showing congressional hearing on June 9, 2022
Jan. 6 hearing gives primetime exposure to violent footage and dramatic evidence—the question is, to what end?
"Much like the televised Watergate hearings half a century ago, the Jan. 6 committee hearings are essential. But an avalanche of evidence against a president wasn’t enough to secure the republic then, and it isn’t now. During the Watergate era, congressional Republicans didn’t hold the president accountable until they feared that a majority of American voters would hold them accountable for failing to do so," writes Ken Hughes, Miller Center Research Specialist and author of numerous books and articles concerning Watergate and the American presidency.
Ken Hughes theconversation.com
El Punt Avui
"The goal of the Watergate case is the same as that of the 'Catalangate'"
Bob Woodward himself, known for uncovering the Watergate scandal in the pages of the Washington Post, has called Ken Hughes "one of the leading U.S. experts on secret presidential recordings, especially those of Lyndon Johnson and Richard Nixon." The historian at the Miller Center at the University of Virginia (USA) has spent the last two decades exploring secret tapes of the White House and unearthing its secrets. Hughes 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('Fatal politics: the Nixon tapes, the Vietnam War and the victims of re-election'). In this interview, he highlights some of the best-known elements of the Watergate case and links the connection points between the American scandal and the current Catalangate.
Ken Hughes El Punt Avui
Virginia Mercury
How the Big Lie lives on in Virginia politics
Some GOP legislators believe drop boxes, receptacles for early votes, are problems. Ken Hughes, researcher at the University of Virginia’s nonpartisan Miller Center, disagreed. “I voted by absentee ballot and drop box in the last election for health reasons, as did thousands of other voters,” Hughes told me by email, “and we voted without jeopardizing the security of the election in any way.
Ken Hughes Virginia Mercury
Richard Nixon in front of a stack of transcripts
How democracy gets eroded
When Nixon muttered to White House aides that he was the victim of a conspiracy of Jews, intellectuals and Ivy Leaguers, “arrogant” people he said placed themselves above the law, he did so to justify arrogantly placing himself above the law.
Ken Hughes The Conversation
Daily Kos
JFK records release leaves much to be desired in the name of transparency
The Biden administration recently agreed to release roughly 1,500 files from the National Archives pertaining to the assassination of President John F. Kennedy and though some 58 years have passed since that grim November day, many of the records still remain sealed. Why? Daily Kos recently interviewed Ken Hughes, a historian and expert on presidential secrets, to take his pulse on why records on the assassination of the nation’s 35th president are still shrouded in mystery and moreover, what that means for governmental transparency.
Ken Hughes Daily Kos
Nixon at War
Nixon at War: Tangled Web
In the fall of 1971, Richard Nixon had reason to be optimistic. The long sought China Summit had just been announced, for the following year, to great (and deserved) acclaim. Vietnam, to be sure, remained an issue, but the continuing troop withdrawal had reduced its political drag at home. With his re-election campaign now looming, the polls showed him well out in front of the presumed Democratic front-runners. But all this good news had little effect on Nixon’s deep-rooted obsession with a growing list of real and perceived adversaries at home. And so, even as the war in Vietnam slowly abated, the war at home only escalated and expanded, against liberals, anti-war activists, Jews, East Coast elites – anyone perceived, however remotely, as a threat to his presidency. “Lashing out was Nixon’s nature,” Jack Farrell tells Kurt Andersen. “His actions were reflexive, heedless of the peril” which lay ahead, and which would ultimately drive him from office.
Ken Hughes Nixon at War Podcast