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

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
There is debate in the United States about whether presidents can be prosecuted for actions while in office. In the wake of the Watergate affair, the Supreme Court ruled against the president 50 years ago. But times have changed.
Ken Hughes Das Erste
According to Nixon expert Ken Hughes of the University of Virginia’s Miller Center of Public Affairs, there was no question in the White House, Congress, or the Supreme Court after Watergate that a former president could be prosecuted for crimes committed when he wielded the powers of the presidency. In fact, President Gerald R. Ford conceded as much when he pardoned his former boss.
Ken Hughes UVA Today