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

Years later the Soviets would make another bid to influence an American election. In 1968, then-Vice President and Democratic presidential candidate Hubert H. Humphrey was contacted by Soviet ambassador Anatoly Dobrynin about helping his campaign, UVA Miller Center research specialist Ken Hughes told TIME in an email.
Ken Hughes TIME
In November 1968, as Johnson was attempting to end the bombing in Vietnam, others were vying for the power of the presidency.
Ken Hughes Slate
As multiple investigations continue into allegations of Russian interference in American elections UVA’s Miller Center has released a report on the Watergate scandal, and what eventually brought down the Nixon presidency. There were multiple investigations into the “third rate burglary,” that eventually implicated the president himself but UVA’s Miller Center’s Ken Hughes a Watergate scholar says they were going nowhere, until, “in the Oval Office, Nixon had a voice-activated tape recorded system, that meant that there were electronic records."
Ken Hughes WCVE
No matter how much success he achieved, Richard Nixon's need for approval was never fully met. He could never shake the sense that all he had worked for might be taken away, and that those who came from more privileged backgrounds looked down on him. This sense was so strong, it filled Nixon with hatred—a hatred with which, in his own words, he eventually “destroyed himself.”
Tom van der Voort Miller Center
Ken Hughes talked about the anniversary of the Watergate break-in, which took place 45 years ago, and its impact on American politics.
Ken Hughes C-SPAN Washington Journal
“It's going to be forgotten.” That was President Richard Nixon's first assessment of the Watergate break in on June 20, 1972, three days after five men were apprehended at Democratic National Committee headquarters. And just less than five months later, on November 7, 1972, 23.5% more Americans voted to reelect the president than to replace him with Democrat George McGovern
Tom van der Voort Miller Center