Chasing Shadows

Chasing Shadows tells a fascinating story of intrigue, lies, and deception, almost as if out of a soap opera. It is the most detailed study of the 1968 election as told through the White House tapes that I have seen. This book is now the most complete and comprehensive look at this episode.

--Thomas A. Schwartz, Vanderbilt University, author of Lyndon Johnson and Europe: In the Shadow of Vietnam

Chasing Shadows, the best account yet of Nixon's devious interference with Lyndon Johnson's 1968 Vietnam War negotiations, shows just how early Nixon's dirty tricks began and just how deeply he was involved.

-- "Washington Post"

"With hundreds of books on Watergate, it might seem as though there is nothing left to learn about the scandal. Hen Hughes's new book proves otherwise."

-- "APS"

[A] chilling and compelling look at one of the multiple origins of the Watergate scandal, which toppled a president and heightened American's cynicism about their leaders.

-- "Richmond Times-Dispatch"

[I]mpeccably sourced, with extensive use of White House tapes and documents, memoirs by the various protagonists and other citations. The Chennault saga has dribbled out in bits and pieces over the years. Here it is told--or at least what we know is told, as Nixon's personal involvement is still a mystery--in one concise, thorough volume.

-- "Politico"

Hughes shows that we still have much to learn by connecting the dots of Nixon's angry venting and the shadowy world of national-security spying

-- "Atlantic"

Hughes' linking of the Huston break-in plan to Chennault's activities provides a credible new rationale to the allegation that Nixon was indeed involved in the caper that could have cost Humphrey the 1968 election--and had it come to light earlier, denied Nixon the White House.

-- "Baltimore Sun"

Hughes's goal in Chasing Shadows is to document Nixon's role in Watergate and in the October 1968 events. Since 2000, he has studied the Nixon and Johnson tapes at the Presidential Recordings Program at the University of Virginia, and he is skeptical about the work of historians whom he sees as uncritically accepting received wisdom for this time period. They tend to balance Nixon's achievements in foreign and domestic policy with his role in Watergate, which they consider politics as usual (169-70). For Hughes, Nixon benefitted from Congressional and media attention on Watergate since the search for the smoking gun covered up his serious attempts to influence the outcome of the 1968 and 1972 elections.

-- "Journal of American Culture"

In Chasing Shadows, Hughes draws on the private recordings of Lyndon B. Johnson and Richard Nixon to connect the dots between the crime Nixon committed to help him win the 1968 presidential election (referred to as the Chennault Affair), his myriad abuses of power while in office and, ultimately, his downfall and resignation. Full of fascinating scenes and candid conversations pulled verbatim from Nixon's tapes, Hughes's book is as compelling as a novel.

-- "Shelf Awareness"

In Chasing Shadows, Ken Hughes explores Nixon's role in thwarting Vietnam peace talks before the 1968 election.... In Washington... there still seems to be an audience. When Ms. [Elizabeth] Drew and Mr. Hughes joined Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein, the famed investigative reporters, for a panel discussion of Nixon's resignation at the headquarters of The Washington Post last week, the line stretched out the door and down the block.

-- "New York Times"

In his landmark 2014 book, "Chasing Shadows," Ken Hughes reconstructs Nixon's spectacularly devious role in scuttling the Paris peace talks of 1968, in the closing weeks of the campaign, after President Lyndon Johnson decided to halt the bombing of North Vietnam to help bring about a possible settlement to end the war.

--Carl Bernstein "Washington Post"

In truth, One Man Against the World adds less to our knowledge than two other recent books: Ken Hughes's Chasing Shadows, about Nixon's efforts during the 1968 election to keep the South Vietnamese from agreeing to Lyndon Johnson's peace proposals, and John W. Dean's The Nixon Defense.

-- "New York Times Book Review"

Ken Hughes is one of America's foremost experts on secret presidential recordings, especially those of Lyndon Johnson and Richard Nixon. In this book he has expertly identified and explained one of the many drivers that put Nixon on the road to Watergate.

Ken Hughes, the author of a new book about Nixon, Chasing Shadows, joined Kunhardt for an interview with "Top Line" and said that one of the most shocking recent revelations about Nixon is that he intentionally prolonged the war in Vietnam for political gain.... "There is I think an extra degree of openness and candor with the people who don't know they are being taped," Hughes said. "Henry Kissinger clearly did not know he was being taped and was very angry about being taped.

-- "Yahoo News"

Ken Hughes's gripping investigation....contends that the Watergate affair wasn't about the cover-up of the Watergate burglary itself, but about the cover-up of other crimes which led further back.

-- "London Review of Books"

Nixon had a secret, a dirty one, one that you probably don't know, and one that he was determined--at any cost--to hide. Ken Hughes has written a thriller of a book that fleshes out the secret, and reveals how it squirmed inside Nixon's presidency and destroyed it through paranoia, guilt and an obsessive fear that the secret might escape and ruin Nixon's electoral hopes, presidency, and reputation.

-- "History Book Club"

On the 40th anniversary of the infamous Watergate break-in, questions remain over former President Nixon's motives in recent American political history, but Hughes, a researcher at the University of Virginia's Miller Center Presidential Recordings Program, provides essential answers with key hours of declassified White House tapes in this book of startling revelations.... Through its foremost practitioners in Johnson and Nixon, Hughes reveals the realities of American politics as blood sport.

-- "Publishers Weekly"

Tricky Dick: The nickname that keeps proving itself does so once more here. It's no surprise to have confirmation, in a general way, that Richard Nixon was a master of the abuse of power, for which even Republicans haven't quite forgiven him. It's no surprise that Lyndon Johnson played a particularly vehement kind of hardball politics, as well. Nonetheless, Hughes, a researcher at the University of Virginia's Miller Center Presidential Recordings Program, turns up plenty of surprises in this careful analysis of tape recordings from both administrations.... [An] utterly newsworthy book.

-- "Kirkus"

With hundreds of books on Watergate, it might seem as though there is nothing left to learn about the scandal. Ken Hughes's new book proves otherwise.... By focusing on the role that the Chennault Affair played in Watergate, Hughes dispels the myth that Nixon's role in the cover-up of the Watergate burglary was his undoing. Chasing Shadows reveals the true depth of Nixon's criminal behavior--it began even before he became president.... In the end, the picture that Hughes paints of the Nixon White House reminds me of a memorable line that Hal Hol-brook's 'Deep Throat' delivers in the film All the President's Men: 'The truth is these are not very bright guys, and things got out of hand.'

-- "Political Science Quarterly"