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

On Tuesday, President Trump handed pardons and clemency to some notoriously corrupt white-collar criminals. To put this string of pardons into perspective, UNews spoke to Ken Hughes, a historian at the University of Virginia's Miller Center, and an expert on presidential powers.
Ken Hughes Univision
"This opens the door for not only President Trump but future presidents to use the vast powers of the federal government against political targets," said Ken Hughes, a presidential historian at the University of Virginia's Miller Center.
Ken Hughes Axios
“The Senate’s verdict on the articles of impeachment will either rein in or unleash the president’s ability to use the federal government’s vast powers for his own political ends,” says Ken Hughes, an expert on abuse of presidential power at the University of Virginia’s Miller Center.
Ken Hughes TIME
A Facebook post claimed that there have been 317 criminal indictments in the administrations of three recent Republican presidents — Donald Trump, Ronald Reagan and Richard Nixon — and only three indictments under three recent Democratic presidents — Barack Obama, Bill Clinton and Jimmy Carter.
Ken Hughes Politifact
“The book is fictional," said Kenneth J. Hughes, historian with the University of Virginia’s Miller Center of Public Affairs. "There’s no real reason to believe it. That said, Shakespeare’s ‘King Lear’ is fictional too. And it’s great. And ‘The Irishman’ is a great movie too.” (Full disclosure: This reporter worked with Hughes at the Miller Center years ago.)
Ken Hughes The Baltimore Sun
Once, not so long ago, congressional Republicans were impeachment’s constitutional stalwarts.
Ken Hughes The Conversation