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Chasing Shadows: The Nixon Tapes, the Chennault Affair, and the Origins of Watergate

Forty years after Watergate forced Richard Nixon to resign, Americans still ask why he launched the cover-up that destroyed his presidency. Ken Hughes traces the origins of Watergate back to the final days of the 1968 presidential campaign, when the Nixon campaign sabotaged Vietnam peace talks for political gain, and argues that Nixon’s ultimate loss of the White House was rooted in an obsession with seizing the evidence of the crime by which he gained the presidency in the first place.

Date & Time

Monday
Nov. 3, 2014
4:00pm – 5:30pm ET

Location

6th Floor, Woodrow Wilson Center
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Overview

Washington History Seminar
Historical Perspectives on International and National Affairs

Chasing Shadows: The Nixon Tapes, the Chennault Affair, and the Origins of Watergate

Ken Hughes
UNIVERSITY OF VIRGINIA

Forty years after Watergate forced Richard Nixon to resign, Americans still ask why he launched the cover-up that destroyed his presidency. If he hadn’t, he would have lost the presidency much faster, according to Ken Hughes of UVA’s Miller Center. Hughes traces the origins of Watergate back to the final days of the 1968 presidential campaign, when the Nixon campaign sabotaged Vietnam peace talks for political gain, and argues that Nixon’s ultimate loss of the White House was rooted in an obsession with seizing the evidence of the crime by which he gained the presidency in the first place.  

Since 2000, Ken Hughes has been a researcher with the White House tapes program of the University of Virginia’s Miller Center. A graduate of Cornell University, Hughes has written about the secret presidential recordings of Nixon, Lyndon Johnson and John Kennedy for the New York Times Magazine, Washington Post, Boston Globe Magazine, Salon, History News Network, Diplomatic History and other publications.

Monday November 3, 2014
4:00 p.m. 
Woodrow Wilson Center, 6th Floor Moynihan Board Room
Ronald Reagan Building, Federal Triangle Metro Stop

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Speaker

Ken Hughes

Miller Center, University of Virginia
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Hosted By

History and Public Policy Program

The History and Public Policy Program makes public the primary source record of 20th and 21st century international history from repositories around the world, facilitates scholarship based on those records, and uses these materials to provide context for classroom, public, and policy debates on global affairs.  Read more

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