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

President Richard Nixon used the government as a weapon against his perceived enemies, writes Ken Hughes.
Ken Hughes
After he won, Nixon promised to end the war and achieve “peace with honor.” However, presidential historian Ken Hughes, who researched Nixon’s tape recordings, found that Nixon delayed ending U.S. involvement in the war.
Ken Hughes The Hill
At first, the two assassination attempts against Ford seemed as if they might turn the clock back to the dark days of the 1960s, when the assassinations of John F. Kennedy, Martin Luther King Jr., and Robert F. Kennedy convulsed American politics, according to Ken Hughes, a historian with the University of Virginia’s Miller Center.
Ken Hughes HISTORY
The Supreme Court's ruling is a radical revision of the Constitution
Ken Hughes The Conversation
Fifty years ago, the trauma of Watergate rocked the nation, leading to the resignation of President Richard M. Nixon and the presidency of Gerald R. Ford. To reflect on this era, the Miller Center brings together our core presidential studies scholars, who will examine these developments through the Secret White House Tapes and the Gerald R. Ford Oral History Project—the Center’s first major initiative after its founding in 1975.
Barbara Perry, Ken Hughes, Guian McKee, Marc Selverstone, William Antholis, and Russell Riley Miller Center Presents
Ken Hughes discusses the 50th anniversary of President Nixon's resignation.
Ken Hughes SiriusXM