Saigon Execution

{{Further|Nguyễn Ngọc Loan|Eddie Adams (photographer)|l2=Eddie Adams}}

Nguyễn Văn Lém was a captain in the Viet Cong (VC) and was known by the code name Bảy Lốp.{{sfn|Robbins|2010|p=145}} He and his wife Nguyễn Thị Lốp lived as undercover arms traffickers in Saigon, trading tires as a front business.{{Sfn|Morris|Hills|2018|p=25}}{{efn|Bảy means "seventh son",{{sfn|Robbins|2010|p=145}} and Lốp was from his wife.{{Cite news|url=https://people.com/archive/unforgettable-vol-53-no-17/|title=Unforgettable|work=people.com|access-date=2018-07-05|language=en|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20180706021742/https://people.com/archive/unforgettable-vol-53-no-17/|archive-date=2018-07-06|url-status=live}} Lốp means "tire" and was related to Lém and Lốp's front business.}}

Nguyễn Ngọc Loan was the chief of the Republic of Vietnam National Police (RVNP),{{Sfn|Robbins|2010|p=93}} and brigadier general of the Army of the Republic of Vietnam (ARVN).{{Sfn|Bailey|Lichty|1972|p=222}} He had anticipated the Tet Offensive, and was responsible for coordinating the ARVN response in Saigon{{snd}}including commanding the RVNP to capture the Ấn Quang Pagoda, which the VC were using as a base of operations.{{Sfn|Robbins|2010|p=150}}

Eddie Adams was an Associated Press (AP) war photographer. Having worked previously as a US Marine,{{sfn|Robbins|2010|p=151}} he had a reputation for being fearless, taking pictures close to danger, and for being often "in the right place at the right time".{{sfn|Robbins|2010|p=152}} Adams had been in Vietnam since 1965 to cover the war, and on February 1, 1968 he heard from the National Broadcasting Company (NBC) about fighting in Chợ Lớn.{{sfn|Willenson|1987|pp=184{{n-}}185}} He met with NBC journalist Howard Tuckner, cameramen Võ Huỳnh and Võ Suu, and soundman Lê Phúc Đinh. They shared a car to Chợ Lớn to cover the conflict.{{Sfn|Bailey|Lichty|1972|p=222}}

File:Execution of Nguyễn Văn Lém film.webm, February 2, 1968.{{Sfn|Bailey|Lichty|1972|pp=224–7}}]]

The NBC and AP crews arrived at the Ấn Quang Pagoda the same morning, and having seen nothing of interest by noon, were preparing to leave. A cameraman for the American Broadcasting Company (ABC) was also present. Meanwhile, Lém was captured by Vietnamese Marines while wearing civilian clothing. The Marines escorted him to where the journalists happened to be.{{Sfn|Robbins|2010|p=153}} The journalists noticed this; the NBC and ABC cameramen began filming.{{Efn|Võ Huỳnh and Võ Suu were on opposite sides of the street. Huỳnh carried a silent camera, and Suu a sound-on-film camera.{{Sfn|Bailey|Lichty|1972|p=222}}}}{{Sfn|Bailey|Lichty|1972|p=222}}{{Sfn|Robbins|2010|p=153}} Loan instructed a Marine to kill Lém, but he was reluctant, so Loan unholstered his gun,{{Sfn|Robbins|2010|p=153}} a .38 Special Smith & Wesson Bodyguard revolver.{{Cite magazine |last=Buckley |first=Tom |date=April 1972 |title=Portrait of an Aging Despot |magazine=Harper's Magazine |url=https://harpers.org/archive/1972/04/portrait-of-an-aging-despot/ |url-access=limited |page=69}} The ABC correspondent was spooked by Loan and stopped filming.{{Efn|He did not resume filming until after the gunshot.{{sfn|Braestrup|1983|p=351}}}} Adams believed this was merely an intimidation tactic, but nonetheless prepared to take a photo. Loan then shot Lém. At the same time, Adams snapped the photo,{{Sfn|Robbins|2010|p=153}} photographing the moment the bullet was still inside Lém's head.{{Sfn|Hariman|Lucaites|2015|p=91}} Lém fell to the ground, blood spurting out of the wound. Loan then explained his actions to the journalists, citing the Americans and South Vietnamese that had died.{{efn|Exactly what was said is disputed. Eddie Adams reported "They killed many of my men and many of your people". Howard Tuckner reported "Many Americans have been killed these last few days and many of my best Vietnamese friends. Now do you understand? Buddha will understand." Several other variations were published in periodicals.{{sfn|Perlmutter|1998|p=43}}}}

A Marine placed a VC propaganda leaflet on Lém's face. His body was left in the street and later taken to a mass grave.{{Sfn|Robbins|2010|p=154}}

According to Oriana Fallaci in her book Nothing, and So Be It, Loan explained shooting Lém in a 1968 interview by arguing that Lém "wasn’t wearing a uniform and I can’t respect a man who shoots without wearing a uniform... I was filled with rage."{{cite book|title=Nothing and So Be It|author = Oriana Fallaci|year = 1972|pages=284–285}} In a later 1972 interview with Tom Buckley of Harper's Magazine, when asked why he killed Lém, Loan said "When you see a man in civilian clothes with a revolver killing your people ... what are you supposed to do? We knew who this man was. His name was Nguyễn Tân Đạt, alias Hàn Sơn. He was the commander of a sapper unit. He killed a policeman. He spit in the face of the men who captured him."

As part of the Tet Offensive, the Viet Cong conducted the targeted killings of prominent people opposed to the VC. Some authors have suggested that Lém was involved in such activities.{{Sfn|Robbins|2010|pp=145–146}} A story emerged during the 1980s that Lém had just murdered a police major, a subordinate and close friend of General Loan, and the major's whole family. Eddie Adams believed and repeated this story. "It turns out that the Viet Cong lieutenant who was killed in the picture had murdered a police major--one of General Loan's best friends--his whole family, wife, kids, the same guy. So these are things we didn't know at the time."Eddie Adams oral history in Kim Willenson, Ed., The Bad War (1987), pp. 186-187. "I didn't have a picture of that Viet Cong blowing away the family."Al Santoli, ed., To Bear Any Burden (1985). In 2008, a new version appeared, in which Lém had murdered the family of Lieutenant Colonel Nguyễn Tuấn, who was not a subordinate of General Loan but an officer in the armored forces of the ARVN.Bai An Tran, "After 40 Years of the Tet Offensive in the Vietnam War - Half of the Truth Deciphered," VietCatholic News, February 7, 2008, http://www.vietcatholic.net/News/Html/52113.htm read 1/27/2018. Vietnam war historian Edwin E. Moïse believes that story is South Vietnamese propaganda, noting the later stories about Lém's actions were not part of Loan's initial explanations. Noting this position, historian Max Hastings said "the truth will never be known".{{cite book|title=Historical Dictionary Of The Vietnam War|author=Edwin E. Moïse|year=2001|pages=294}}{{Cite book |last=Hastings |first=Max |author-link=Max Hastings |title=Vietnam: An Epic Tragedy, 1945{{n-}}1975 |date=2018 |publisher=HarperCollins |isbn=978-0-06-240566-1 |location=New York |page=467}} A similar skeptical assessment was made by researcher Christopher Saunders.{{cite web|title=History Thread: The Shooter in the Photograph|url=https://the-avocado.org/2023/01/10/history-thread-the-shooter-in-the-photograph/|author=Christopher Saunders|date = 10 January 2023|website=The Avocado}}

Other stories about Lém assert that he was a turncoat who had been working for both the police and the Vietcong, or that he was a small time Vietcong informant who was captured while simply trying to escape.

The event received extensive attention in the United States during the coming days; the photo was published on most American newspapers the next morning, and 20 million people saw the NBC's film of it on The Huntley–Brinkley Report that evening.{{sfn|Perlmutter|1998|p=36}} Various other organizations and American politicians commented on the event.{{sfn|Robbins|2010|pp=160{{n-}}163}}

The photograph is commonly characterized as having created a massive shift in American public opinion against the war. Historian David Perlmutter found little to no evidence to back up this claim.{{sfn|Perlmutter|1998|pp=40, 43{{n-}}44, 47, 49{{n-}}51}}

File:Eddie Adams (1969).jpg with his photo in 1969.]]

The photo came to haunt Adams: "I was getting money for showing one man killing another. Two lives were destroyed, and I was getting paid for it. I was a hero." He elaborated on this in a later piece of writing: "Two people died in that photograph. The general killed the Viet Cong; I killed the general with my camera."[https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-42864421 Eddie Adams' iconic Vietnam War photo: What happened next], BBC

Ben Wright, associate director for communications at the Dolph Briscoe Center for American History, said of the photo: "There's something in the nature of a still image that deeply affects the viewer and stays with them. The film footage of the shooting, while ghastly, doesn't evoke the same feelings of urgency and stark tragedy."

Nguyễn Ngọc Loan continued to serve as Brigadier General and Chief of Police until he was wounded in action in May that year.{{cite web|url=https://digitaljournalist.org/issue0410/faas.html|title=The Saigon Execution|author=Horst Faas|year=2004|website=The Digital Journalist}} In 1975, he fled South Vietnam during the Fall of Saigon, emigrating eventually to the United States.{{Cite news|url=https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/local/1998/07/16/nguyen-ngoc-loan-dies-at-67/6d360dcf-b95b-451d-ae82-1ecff1607151/|title=NGUYEN NGOC LOAN DIES AT 67|last=Barnes|first=Bart|date=1998-07-16|newspaper=The Washington Post|access-date=2018-07-09|language=en-US|issn=0190-8286|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20180707010222/https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/local/1998/07/16/nguyen-ngoc-loan-dies-at-67/6d360dcf-b95b-451d-ae82-1ecff1607151/|archive-date=2018-07-07|url-status=live}} Pressure from the U.S. Congress resulted in an investigation by the Library of Congress,{{Cite news|url=https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/politics/1978/11/03/us-acts-to-deport-saigon-official-who-killed-bound-prisoner-in-1968/036da5ef-641b-4e3d-8de2-17771ce7d6ec/|title=U.S. Acts to Deport Saigon Official Who Killed Bound Prisoner in 1968|last=Dickey|first=Christopher|date=1978-11-03|newspaper=Washington Post|access-date=2018-07-09|language=en-US|issn=0190-8286|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20180703221121/https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/politics/1978/11/03/us-acts-to-deport-saigon-official-who-killed-bound-prisoner-in-1968/036da5ef-641b-4e3d-8de2-17771ce7d6ec/|archive-date=2018-07-03|url-status=live}} which concluded that Lém's execution was illegal under South Vietnamese law. In 1978, the Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) contended that Loan had committed a war crime.{{cite news|url=https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/politics/1978/11/03/us-acts-to-deport-saigon-official-who-killed-bound-prisoner-in-1968/036da5ef-641b-4e3d-8de2-17771ce7d6ec/|title=U.S. Acts to Deport Saigon Official Who Killed Bound Prisoner in 1968|author=Christopher Dickey|date=November 3, 1978|newspaper=Washington Post|access-date=July 3, 2018|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20180703221121/https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/politics/1978/11/03/us-acts-to-deport-saigon-official-who-killed-bound-prisoner-in-1968/036da5ef-641b-4e3d-8de2-17771ce7d6ec/|archive-date=2018-07-03|url-status=live}} They attempted to deport him, but President Jimmy Carter personally intervened to stop the proceedings, stating that "such historical revisionism was folly". Carter's staff explained that the president was concerned about how Loan would be treated back in Vietnam.{{Cite news|url=https://www.newspapers.com/image/302104567/?terms=%22nguyen%2Bngoc%2Bloan%22|title=Carter bids to halt Viet general's deportation|date=6 December 1978|work=The Miami News|access-date=9 July 2018|page=9C|url-access=subscription |via=Newspapers.com}}{{Cite news|url=https://www.newspapers.com/image/98687845/?terms=%22nguyen%2Bngoc%2Bloan%22|title=Viet executioner won't be deported|date=2 December 1978|work=Detroit Free Press|access-date=9 July 2018|agency=New York Times Service|page=2A|url-access=subscription |via=Newspapers.com}} Loan died on July 14, 1998, in Burke, Virginia, at the age of 67.{{cite news |date=16 July 1998 |title=Nguyen Ngoc Loan, 67, Dies; Executed Viet Cong Prisoner |url=https://www.nytimes.com/1998/07/16/world/nguyen-ngoc-loan-67-dies-executed-viet-cong-prisoner.html |url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20090420041251/http://www.nytimes.com/1998/07/16/world/nguyen-ngoc-loan-67-dies-executed-viet-cong-prisoner.html |archive-date=2009-04-20 |access-date=5 July 2009 |work=The New York Times}}

The sole survivor of the massacre of Tuân's family (allegedly by Lém) was Huan Nguyen; aged nine at the time, he was shot three times during the attack and stayed with his mother for two hours as she bled to death. In 2019, he became the highest-ranking Vietnamese-American officer in the U.S. military when he was promoted to the rank of rear admiral in the United States Navy.{{Cite news |title=Huan Nguyen becomes first Vietnamese U.S. Navy Rear Admiral |url=https://www.navsea.navy.mil/Media/News/SavedNewsModule/Article/1986946/huan-nguyen-becomes-first-vietnamese-us-navy-rear-admiral/|date=2019-10-10|access-date=2020-06-12|work=Naval Sea Systems Command}}{{cite web|url=https://www.military.com/history/navys-first-vietnamese-admiral-saw-his-family-killed-infamous-viet-cong-guerrilla.html|title=The Navy's First Vietnamese Admiral Saw His Family Killed by an Infamous Viet Cong Guerrilla|date=19 July 2022 |publisher=Military.com|accessdate=23 September 2022}}

In 2012, Douglas Sloan made a short movie, Saigon '68, about Adams' photograph. This movie details the influence it had on the lives of Adams and Loan, and on public opinion of the Vietnam War.{{Cite web |last=Icontent Films |title=Short Film |url=http://tmotfilm.com/shortfilm/ |access-date=October 6, 2022 |website=The Moment of Truth}}

• The Terror of War, another influential photo from the Vietnam War
• Thích Quảng Đức, whose self-immolation during the war was photographed
• Jack Ruby Shoots Lee Harvey Oswald, another Pulitzer-winning photo of someone at the moment they were fatally shot
• List of photographs considered the most important

{{notelist}}

{{reflist}}

• {{Cite journal |doi=10.1177/107769907204900201 |issn=0022-5533 |volume=49 |issue=2 |last1=Bailey |first1=George A. |last2=Lichty |first2=Lawrence W. |title=Rough Justice on a Saigon Street: A Gatekeeper Study of NBC's Tet Execution Film |journal=Journalism Quarterly |date=1972-06-01|pages=221–238 }}
• {{Cite book |last=Braestrup |first=Peter |author-link=Peter Braestrup |title=Big Story: How the American press and Television Reported and Interpreted the Crisis of Tet 1968 in Vietnam and Washington |publisher=Yale University Press |year=1983 |isbn=0-89158-012-3 |edition=Abridged |volume=1 |location=New Haven and London |ol=3491247M |ol-access=free}}
• {{Cite book |last1=Hariman |first1=Robert |url= |title=Getting the Picture: The Visual Culture of the News |last2=Lucaites |first2=John Louis |date=2015 |publisher=Bloomsbury Academic |isbn=978-1-4725-2422-5 |editor-last=Hill |editor-first=Jason E. |location=London |publication-date=2015 |chapter=Street Execution of a Viet Cong Prisoner, Saigon, 1968 |doi=10.4324/9781003103547 |editor-last2=Schwartz |editor-first2=Vanessa R.}}
• {{Cite book |last1=Morris |first1=Virginia |title=Ho Chi Minh's Blueprint for Revolution: In the Words of Vietnamese Strategists and Operatives |last2=Hills |first2=Clive A. |date=2018 |publisher=McFarland & Company |isbn=978-1-4766-6563-4 |location=Jefferson |lccn=2018014974}}
• {{Cite book |last=Perlmutter |first=David D. |title=Photojournalism and Foreign Policy: Icons of Outrage in International Crises |date=1998 |publisher=Praeger Publishers |series=Praeger Series in Political Communication |location=Westport |issn=1062-5623 |lccn=98-16908 |isbn=0-275-95812-4}}
• {{Cite book |last=Robbins |first=James S. |author-link=James S. Robbins |title=This Time We Win: Revisiting the Tet Offensive |year=2010 |publisher=Encounter Books |isbn=978-1-59403-229-5 |edition=First American|ol=23972233M |ol-access=free}}
• {{Cite book |last=Willenson |first=Kim |title=The Bad War: An Oral History of the Vietnam War |collaboration=Correspondents of Newsweek |date=June 1987 |publisher=New American Library |location=New York |isbn=0-453-00546-2 |ol=26271770M |ol-access=free}}

• [http://www.digitaljournalist.org/issue0410/faas.html The Saigon Execution], an account by an AP photo editor including research after the war.

{{Vietnam War}}

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