Image: Eddie Adams’ photograph “Saigon Execution” showing the moment Nguyễn Văn Lém is shot by Nguyễn Ngọc Loan

On this day in history, February 1, 1968, South Vietnamese General Nguyen Ngoc Loan, in charge of the national police, executes assumed Viet Cong officer Nguyen Van Lem on a Saigon street early in the Tet Offensive. Captured on NBC TV cameras and by Associated Press photographer Eddie Adams, the picture and film footage were sent worldwide, quickly symbolizing the Vietnam War’s stark brutality.

However, what most people at the time, and even now, do not realize about the events leading up to the “Saigon Execution” photo illustrate a very different picture from what was shown to the public at first glance.

By 1968, America was up to its neck in Vietnam. What began as a limited advisory deployment soon became full-scale combat between Us forces and a mix of North Vietnamese regular forces and Viet Cong guerillas. The latter operated in the shadows all over South Vietnam, and the Americans could not stop them.

With the Tet Offensive in early 1968, 80,000 communist troops struck over 100 targets nationwide. Saigon was overrun, allowing the Viet Cong to eliminate its political adversaries and settle some old scores. General Loan, as chief of South Vietnam’s National Police Force, was part of the effort to drive out the Viet Cong and re-capture the city.

 On the morning that the “Saigon Execution” photo was taken, Loan led a police unit in Saigon looking for civilians and the Viet Cong, who might be a definite threat to them. Nguyen Van Lem was precisely the type of enemy fighter Loan was looking for. According to the soldier’s who captured Lem, he was caught red-handed leading a Viet Cong hit team tasked with killing National Police members or, if they could not locate any, their families were used instead.

On the day of the “Saigon Execution” photo, Nguyen Van Lem’s death squad had recently killed 34 people – seven police officers, two or three Americans, and several police officers’ family members, all bound by the wrists and shot in the head over an open pit – and they may have been looking for Loan himself.

According to the Geneva Convention of 1949, Lem was fighting as a war criminal because he was not in uniform. Because of his actions that morning, he was subject to summary execution when or if South Vietnamese forces caught him. The Viet Cong were indiscriminately killing people. Summary execution of partisans is allowable under the Geneva Convention.

The “Saigon Execution” photo would become a symbol of the anti-war movement in America, and it was taken largely by accident. Photographer Eddie Adams was out looking for possible images to take, and he saw what he surmised was an ordinary Viet Cong soldier being brought out into the street. Adams decided to start taking pictures. He stated that he

“…followed the three of them as they walked toward us, making an occasional picture.    When they were close – maybe five feet away – the soldiers stopped and backed away. I saw a man walk into my camera viewfinder from the left. He took a pistol out of his holster and raised it. I had no idea he would shoot. It was common to hold a gun to the head of prisoners during questioning. So I prepared to make that picture – the threat, the interrogation. But it didn’t happen. The man just pulled the pistol out of his holster, raised it to the VC’s head, and shot him in the temple. I made a picture at the same time.”

Interviewed in May 1968, Loan was asked about the execution. He stated that “He wasn’t wearing a uniform and I can’t respect a man who shoots without wearing a uniform. Because it’s too easy: you kill and you’re not recognized. I respect a North Vietnamese because he’s dressed as a soldier, like myself, and so he takes the same risks as I do, But a Viet Cong in civilian clothes – I was filled with rage.”

Eddie Adams’ “Saigon Execution” photo was a worldwide journalistic sensation. However, it was stripped of its context and presented as a war crime caught on film for the world to judge. The “world” did not know who the victim was or why he was shot, and the public was left to assume that he was just a random person being murdered by a bloodthirsty villain. Adams’ photo won him the 1969 Pulitzer Prize for Spot News Photography. Adams later stated that he regretted that he was unable to get a picture “of that Viet Cong (Lem) blowing away the (Tuan) family.”

A few months after the “Saigon Execution” photo, Loan was seriously wounded near Saigon by machine gun fire, and the result was the amputation of his leg. He spent time convalescing in Australia and the United States. He returned to South Vietnam, and in 1975, with Saigon’s fall, he fled to the United States. He settled in Dale City, Virginia, and eventually opened a pizzeria in a suburb of Washington, D.C.

In 1978 Loan was almost deported from the U.S. for war crimes based on the “Saigon Execution” photo, but through the intervention of Eddie Adams and President Jimmy Carter, General Loan was able to stay in America. In 1991, he closed his restaurant and retired following increased notoriety about his past caused a decline in business and threats made upon him and his family. Adams remembered that on his last visit to the pizza parlor shortly before it closed, he had seen written on a toilet wall, “We know who you are, you f***er.”

Nguyen Ngoc Loan died of cancer on July 14, 1998, aged 67, in Burke, Virginia.

Eddie Adams wrote a eulogy to Loan in Time:

            “The general killed the Viet Cong; I killed the general with my camera. Still, photographers are the most powerful weapon in the world. People believe them, but photographs do lie, even without manipulation. They are only half-truths. What the photograph didn’t say was, ‘What would you do if you were the general at that time and place on that hot day, and you caught the so-called bad guy after he blew away one, two, or three American soldiers?’”

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