This Week in Photography History: Eddie Adams’ Pulitzer Winning Image Was Captured

by Abram Goglanian on 02/01/2013

Eddie Adams (1933-2004) who documented thirteen wars, shot one of the most iconic, memorable and gritty images of the Vietnam War on February 1, 1968 which you see above. This image is forever etched into the minds and history books of both past and future generations, to the effect that one simply cannot lookup information on the Vietnam War without coming across this photograph. This image won Adams a Pulitzer Prize in 1969 and despite the fact that he truly, desperately wanted to win a Pulitzer, he lamented the fact that he won for this image.

When asked about the reaction of this photo has had on the world, Eddie would become quite serious in his mannerisms and often change the topic to something else. In a discussion about General Nguyen Ngoc Loan He was quoted saying:

“The general killed the Viet Cong; I killed the general with my camera. Still photographs 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 people?“

Eddie personally felt that the photo did a massive injustice to the General and ultimately ruined his life, he did seek him out to personally apologize for the irreparable damage to his honor and reputation.

Regardless of how you may feel about the image, there is no denying the power behind it, it is uncommon in most media outlets to share an image portraying the exact moment of someone’s death, but this surely is one that will live on forever, and while Eddie Adams did not want recognition for the image, it was clear that it resonated with the world when he received the Pulitzer Prize. That single image changed his entire career, he would occasionally face criticisms from colleagues for not trying to stop the execution, and the image itself was so haunting to him that he couldn’t even look at it for two years after taking it. He felt conflicted to be getting paid for photographing one man killing another.

Personally, I have an immense level of respect for Photojournalists that have to document warzones as so many of them are put into dangerous or controversial situations, and as a Documentary Photographer you try to remain invisible and let the scene unfold without influencing it. I cannot imagine what that must be like to experience. In closing, I will leave you with the image sequence leading up to the execution and the moment afterwards, and I ask you to realize and understand the important cultural role we play as Photographers, and to think about the power behind your images. What message are you sending with the images you capture and share with the world?

Leading up to the fateful moment

Shortly before the execution

The moment General Loan fired his gun.

The moment after execution

Citation:

Please Support The Phoblographer

We love to bring you guys the latest and greatest news and gear related stuff. However, we can’t keep doing that unless we have your continued support. If you would like to purchase any of the items mentioned, please do so by clicking our links first and then purchasing the items as we then get a small portion of the sale to help run the website.

Also, please follow us on Facebook, Flickr and Twitter.

Tagged as: AP News, Eddie Adams, History, photography history, photojournalism, Pulitzer Prize, TWIPH, Vietnam War, Violence

http://www.facebook.com/chris.lewis.16144606 Chris Lewis

Powerful stuff
- Race
  
  I seen the footage and the sequence of the shot went fast. I always seen the photo thinking there may have been some talking or moments of hesitation but then when I seen the film, it went quick
gdmorris

The only way this image can resonate with it’s full impact was to have lived through this period. Then what it represents makes sense. Thanks for posting this on its anniversary.
- http://www.goglanianphoto.com/ Abram Goglanian
  
  I agree, I felt it was important to share on this specific date. Not having lived through the Vietnam era I can’t speak for those that did, but I can only relate the impact this image has had on me personally.
  - minigunone
    
    It was a bad time in America! Just like now is a bad time. Liars and thieves in Washington DC.
    All wars are about the money to be made! I served, RVN 68/69
http://www.facebook.com/bjdelr Bj Del Rosario

Wow, thanks for sharing this Chris.
- http://www.goglanianphoto.com/ Abram Goglanian
  
  Actually it was my post
  - http://www.facebook.com/bjdelr Bj Del Rosario
    
    My fault. Thanks Abram! :X
disqus_c7VbG2xWva

I didn’t know the sequence. Makes the famous shot more interesting. Thanks for sharing.
Pingback: Weekly Debrief | 02.03.2013 :
Pingback: un-excogitate.org » Blog Archiv » Recent Readings on Safe Coding, Extracting DLLs, Lockpicking, Stripping, Photography and Git
Rosco

Isn’t there film footage of this?
- http://www.facebook.com/cameron.irvine.18 Cameron Irvine
  
  Yes – colour footage , same angle.
- Scott Ratzloff
  
  Yes…it was in a film called “Hearts and Minds”. This man was executed.
tomheet

Trace a line from the barrel to his head. Take into account upward barrel jump common on any handgun I ever fired. I only noticed this now, I have come across this picture a few times in recent years. Not trying to say I know fore sure, but was he wounded, or executed?
- minigunone
  
  Executed…
  - burningtree
    
    The NBC video is out there, and included in “An Unlikely Weapon” for all to see.
tomheet

also, consider the ANGLE between barrel and top of the head. If you trace it out, it looks like it would graze the skull. If a hollow point round was used, then maybe, massive damage would be inflicted….
- http://twitter.com/mtdoonmeister Doc Holliday
  
  According to Adams description of when he exposed the image, it was as Loan was in the process of drawing his pistol to fire. The motion picture record shows the incident from another angle and isn’t helpful as what was happening at the time the picture was taken…
  - JTW
    
    and don’t forget skull fragments slicing into the brain… Don’t even have to penetrate the skull to get those.
JohnnyE1000

Yes there was film footage of this. I remember seeing it in the anti-war
documentary “Hearts & Minds” produced by the Quakers during the
war. The photo is memorable but the film version of the incident will
stay etched in your mind forever.
- browninghipower
  
  I saw the film of this event as well and am in awe of Adams’ pure technique…you see him running backwards constantly exposing his film…and he’s using either a Leica M3 or M4…a rangfinder camera. His instincts and reflexes and awareness are awesome. I’m sorry that he had such trouble with that image; and I’m puzzled that colleagues questioned his intents and integrity. It’s an extraordinary image that captures a searing moment. And it speaks volumes to Eddie’s character that he sought out the general to make amends. It was a time, however, that much of the nation only wanted to see what it chose to see about Vietnam.
  - burningtree
    
    The complete story of this photo is in the documentary, “An Unlikely Weapon: The Eddie Adams Story..”
punktoad

The other iconic vietnam war photo won Nick Ut a Pulitzer Prize in 1972. However, the central subject survived and is now a UNESCO Goodwill Ambassador. http://www.stuff.co.nz/auckland/local-news/north-shore-times/578664/Terror-of-iconic-war-image-retold

See Collages of the Sixties and Seventies.

http://punktoad.org/DecadeSixties.html

http://punktoad.org/DecadeSeventies.html
artchr

I wrote a paper on this image in college. Of all the famous Viet Nam war images this one is the most famous. What isn’t mentioned above is that the incident occurred during the Tet Offensive (late Jan-Feb 1968). Tet failed as an attempt to overwhelm the South and US military but was also a PR debacle stateside. Images of blatant violence were increasingly common at the time, thanks to media coverage of the war, but this took that to a new level of brutality. The political effect of Tet – aided strongly by this photo – was profound. About six weeks after the photo was published LBJ dropped out of the Presidential race. Not long after MLK Jr. and Bobby Kennedy were assassinated. No wonder Adams had such mixed feelings. It’s as though his picture, powerful as it was, was only scratching the surface of our undeniably human capacity for inflicting pain and suffering on each other. Adams was witness to something strange and fearsome.
- http://www.goglanianphoto.com/ Abram Goglanian
  
  Thanks for your insightful info my friend! It’s much appreciated.
- http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100000661153849 Paul Lee
  
  great insight.. thanks archr.. learned something new today.
- Colonel Neville
  
  Au contraire. The Viet Cong that the General shot, had just been caught at the home of one of the General’s lieutenants where this VC killer had just sliced up and murdered the lieutenants children and wife with a large knife. If there were actual objective, authentic journalistic investigations applied to this photo, this would be common knowledge. So there’s your “human capacity for inflicting pain and suffering” right there. Now research and READ from sources worth a damn. No, really. Colonel Neville..
- http://www.facebook.com/people/Able-Witness/100003759204785 Able Witness
  
  The act was neither strange nor fearsome. The execution was for Charlie being a monster and Charlie died instantly — more mercy than he deserved.
Walter Lawrence

What a shame we did not have the internet back in the days of Vietnam. The leftist media…people like the pathological liar Cronkite….would not have been able to dissiminate their lies without the real truth being revealed.
- Minigunone
  
  Your premise is incorrect. Disinformation is happening each and everyday. It’s actually worse,the lamestream media and becoming more (state run media), is in total control of what is or is not reported to the general population. Much easier to brain wash the populous!
- Art Glick
  
  What revisionist claptrap – calling the most trusted figure of the 1960s a pathological liar! Cronkite might have been guilty for repeating some of the propaganda coming out of Washington, but he was exploited to do so. Let us not forget that Walter travelled to ‘Nam in ’68, and then came back and honestly reported what he saw. That report is what convinced LBJ that he had lost the support of the American public. Your phrase “leftist media” reveals your true bent. If the media was really as leftist as you right wing nuts claim, Clinton would have been elected President in ’08, and Howard Dean would have at least won the Democratic nomination in ’04. In both cases, your so-called leftist media sabotaged their candidacies for a more conservative candidate. You couldn’t be farther off base, and you should learn how to spell, too!
  - kylez
    
    Obama was a more conservative candidate than Clinton? On what planet? There is nobody alive today who has previously witnessed the hard leftist control freak president that Obama is.
    - vernabc
      
      Bitter…?
      - http://www.facebook.com/hussein.soetoroobama Hussein SoetoroObama
        
        Glick live on communist planet…
    - Ronen
      
      On class issues he most definitely was and is. During the ’08 primaries Clinton was identified with Democrat’s blue collar base, while Obama was the candidate of the upper middle class (which truthfully dominates the party these days at the national level). I would know, I volunteered with the Clinton campaign. Just look at the primary elections voter turnout data and you will see it the numbers.
      
      I would say that Clinton in ’08 was more traditional left in terms of being pro-working class, comprehensive healthcare reform, etc. Obama was more new left, college kids wanting to change the world but also score a job with a big corporation left (or pseudo-left in my opinion).
      - interestedobserver2
        
        Well that pretty much explains your predilection for Clinton. Got an axe to grind do we?
- Geoff Dennis
  
  Leftist media also didn’t show more than the smallest tip of American total war destruction. This photographer may have misrepresented that moment, but the decision not to closely examine the whole “body count” approach to victory masked indiscriminate civilian slaughter by our forces. All media gives and takes away from the. Truth, and rarely with a political agenda.
  - JTW
    
    War IS slaughter, most of what’s now blamed on Americans by the media (and the Vietnamese government) was actually the doing of the VC and NVA, with a side order of SVA.
    It was policy on the communist side to slaugher entire villages if a single person was found there who was suspected of being a sympathiser to the Americans or South Vietnamese government.
    If the American forces elected to bomb a village hosting a VC mortar rather than running the gauntlet of mortar bombs and rifle fire in order to take it (and be faced with NVA or VC using the villagers as human shields, Saddam Hussain wasn’t the first one to come up with that idea) I don’t blame them.
    - plumplum
      
      You clown.
      I guess the VC and the NVA had the napalm and helicopter gunships, flew all those bombing mission, defoliation flights?
      Pathetic attempt at revisionism.
- plumplum
  
  Are you rally saying that the Vietnam war was fought to fight them ‘over there’ rather than in NewYork?
Aghast in Amerikkka

Summary execution of an unarmed prisoner is a war crime, the photographer should not have apologized to the murderer.
- UrDumb
  
  Paramilitary =/= Protection of Geneva Convention, so technically he didn’t count as a POW. This doesn’t excuse the General, but it’s stupid to blame him for the basic human emotions of extreme stress and rage. Do you think the VC would have done the same if the tables had been reversed? No, it would have been far worse than a bullet to the brain… American POWs were on occasion skinned alive and left to rot.
  - http://www.facebook.com/hussein.soetoroobama Hussein SoetoroObama
    
    The photographer, as he recalled in his biography, actually apologized to the General Loan, a hero who was beloved by his troops and everybody that knew him. He apologized for the fact that the hippie filth and communist scum used his work for their poisonous campaign of lies that resulted in the murder of millions of people…after the Americans left, the Viet mobsters’ chinese supporters in turn were thanked by one of the most massive massacre in history,
    the Sino-Viet invasion of 78
    - plumplum
      
      “most massive massacre in history .. murder of millions of people”… Rubbish.
      Reference for this disinformation please.
- LOUFONTINATO
  
  The murderer was the VC terrorist lying on the ground with the bullet in his head. He had just slit the throats of 12 members of the generals immediate and related families. I don’t believe the photographer apologized to the VC terrorist.
simmjz

The picture of Gen loan apparently killing a civilian was a VC Gen in civilian clothes which is automatic execution . This “poor civilian” had killed several members of gen loan family. try to get it staright!
- http://www.facebook.com/people/Pocono-Shooting-Range/100001567268553 Pocono Shooting Range
  
  This is what everybody ignores !!!!
  - JTW
    
    just as they ignore that that other iconic image supposedly showing a child burning after being napalmed actually shows a child burning after being doused with petrol and set on fire by the VC…
    It’s all part of the anti-American, and anti-western campaign waged by communists (now “socialists”) that’s ongoing to this day and started before Vietnam (though Vietnam probably was what institutionalised it in the American media).
    - sibbaldflats
      
      The 1972 photo you cite was actually a U.S./S. Vietnamese napalm attack on a village. You talk about propaganda – too funny. Look up Nick Turse’s new book Kill Anything That Moves that uses U.S. documents, and American veterans’ and Vietnamese eyewitness accounts of the systematic brutality used by the U.S. military against civilians in that war. They were slaughtering the people they said they were trying to liberate. You can’t have it both ways. You, JTW, are part of a pathetic campaign to whitewash history that never seems to end.
    - http://www.facebook.com/patrick.j.brennan.7 Patrick Joseph Brennan
      
      This the iconic image you are referring to – supposedly showing a child burning after being napalmed actually shows a child burning after being doused with petrol and set on fire by the VC…
      
      Kim’s Story: The Road from VietnamDirected by Shelley Saywell
      
      There was one photograph that captured the horrific nature of the Vietnam War, it was that of a nine-year old girl running naked down the road, screaming in agony from napalm burns that had eaten into her flesh. The photographer who took that picture of young Kim Phuc was awarded a Pulitzer Prize. But ironically, the picture that moved millions to tears, ultimately made Kim Phuc a victim all over again. This is her story.
      
      Kim ran away from the photograph and all its pressures, to claim her own life. Four years ago, she and her husband defected to Canada, where they were given initial sanctuary by a Quaker activist. In order to confront her past, Kim comes to America, where she meets many people who help fill in the holes of her story — things she can’t remember or knew only as an injured child. Kim learns that she will always be a public person — and a symbol.
      
      Saywell’s film crew also accompanied Kim Phuc on a remarkable odyssey to Washington’s Vietnam War Memorial wall, as part of Veterans’ Day ceremonies. There, dignitaries struggled to hold back tears as Kim, still in their minds as the little girl the whole world wanted to hold and make better, made it plain that her mission was one of forgiveness and a wider healing. Kim’s Story culminates in an astonishing, unanticipated meeting between Kim and a former American officier who tells her that he ordered the napalm strike that almost killed her. In the end, Kim’s Story is one of forgiveness — of the personal and public healing of wounds from this century’s longest, most divisive war.
      - mickeefann
        
        I was under the impression that the napalming of this village was the result of the South Vietnamese Air Force accidentally dropping on freindlies. In fact, if I remember correctly, the photographer Nick Turse admitted that years later. I don’t believe the comment above that says an American officer told Kim Phuc that he ordered that napalm strike. It sounds like more communist/Hanoi Jane type propaganda, as do a lot of other comments on this page. We were not murderous monsters in Vietnam, we were soldiers and sailors doing a job we were sent there to do, and all of you left wing America haters can go-to-hell.
        
        God
        
        yeah right…
        
        Troy Berkely
        
        I hear you, and couldn’t agree with you more!
        
        moomint
        
        In the mid-50s, America created South Vietnam to prevent a nationwide election in which the country would have democratically elected the Vietminh. Over 20 years, the Americans and their allies then perpetuated a a genocide in which 4m+ people died, the vast majority civilians. They pursued abduction, torture, rape, and murder as a matter of policy (the Phoenix Program), 30,000+ died this way. They used chemical weapons such as napalm, white phospherous and agent orange, the latter responsible for hundreds of thousands of birth defects across the region, still a problem to this day (unexploded mines and cluster munitions also continue to claim lives). They dropped more explosive ordinance than both sides during WWII, with Kissinger’s stated aim being to “bomb them back to the stone age”. These are the basic raw fact, not propaganda, the 2nd Indochina War being the greatest unpunished genocide of the 20th century and the reason America will never sign up to the ICC. If there was a hell, General Loan and every other party to this crime against humanity would be headed straight there.
    - http://www.facebook.com/people/Ron-Critchlow/591259031 Ron Critchlow
      
      You ever heard of Tiger Force? They were a rabidly bloodthirsty unit operating in Vietnam who liked to wear strands of ears around their neck – cut off the old women and babies they killed. Michael D. Sallah, a reporter at The Blade(Toledo) newspaper, obtained unreleased, confidential records of U.S. Army commander Henry Tufts. One file in these records referred to a previously unpublished war crimes investigation known as the Coy Allegation. Between 1971 and 1975 the Army’s Criminal Investigation Command had investigated the Tiger Force unit for alleged war crimes committed between May and November 1967. The documents included sworn statements from many Tiger Force veterans, which detailed war crimes allegedly committed by Tiger Force members during the Song Ve Valley and Operation Wheeler military campaigns. The statements, from both individuals who allegedly participated in the war crimes and those that did not, described war crimes such as the following:
      
      the routine torture and execution of prisoners
      
      the routine practice of intentionally killing unarmed Vietnamese villagers including men, women, children, and elderly people
      
      the routine practice of cutting off and collecting the ears of victims
      
      the practice of wearing necklaces composed of human ears
      
      the practice of cutting off and collecting the scalps of victims
      
      incidents where soldiers would plant weapons on murdered Vietnamese villagers
      
      an incident where a young mother was drugged, raped, and then executed
      
      an incident where a soldier killed a baby and cut off her head after the baby’s mother was killed
      
      The investigators concluded that many of the war crimes indeed took place.
      Despite this, the Army decided not to pursue any prosecutions.
      http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tiger_Force#Investigations_of_war_crimes
      - http://www.facebook.com/hussein.soetoroobama Hussein SoetoroObama
        
        Critchlow, you vomitbag, you forget to mention that your beloved General Giap bragged of personnally murdering 50,000 civilians the very day after the American evacuation…scumbags like you apologize for Hitler, Stalin, Pol Pot and Che Guevara…
        
        Tarnsy
        
        Ron sounds like he is pointing out war crimes that were never tried, which is a shame since terrible criminals should be brought to justice. What made Ron a “vomitbag”?
        
        Perhaps I missread his post. Can you help me out here Hussein?
        
        Troy Berkely
        
        Dude! Go easy! You make as much sense as a backwards monkey trying to jack off his tail. Anyone who sounds like a vomitbag its you!
    - truemoboy
      
      No, stupid.
- http://www.facebook.com/people/Thomas-Pirko/100000039969645 Thomas Pirko
  
  ” was a VC Gen in civilian clothes which is automatic execution” — I had to reread that a few times.
  - hello
    
    Well, it’s not exactly an automatic killing, but wearing Civilian clothing does disqualify you from Geneva protection. The truth of the matter is the Geneva Convention protects only soldiers wearing their uniforms as officially trained ‘employees’ of their state. Don’t forget these laws were drafted from things such as the German use of Mustard Gas in WW1; in a way, the G.C. outlaws ‘unfair’ fighting, which is exactly what paramilitary warfare is (civilian militia acting a instrument of warfare.) Paramilitary operations will lead to an increase in innocent civilian deaths, and as they operate outside of the Convention, often employ tactics that would normally be banned from conventional war fighters themselves. It’s all frightfully murky, but nobody ever said war was objective. And while two wrongs dont make a right, let us not forget the VC would do far worse to US soldiers than a bullet to the head.
    - gainwmn
      
      All that you wrote above is correct, except that it is the US that invaded Vietnam (without any invitation) and it was the US that had bombed and burned both North Vietnam cities and South Vietnam villages into the ground,, while Vietnamese had done nothing whatsoever to the territorial America.
      
      If the Soviets’ invasion to Afghanistan and war made after numerous suppositions of the Afghani ruling government at the time, has been widely considered an illegal invasion and egregious violation of the International law, then the respective US invasion and war made without any similar official requests from the ruling South Vietnamese military junta definitely had been much graver crime.
      Not already mentioning that “evil” Soviets did not carpet bomb Pakistan and Saudi Arabia – the countries where the training camps fro Muslim terrorists were located and from which the latter made the incursions to Afghan territory, while Americans did that – on the respective reasons – to Cambodia and Laos.
      
      This creates several huge and principal differences, my friend, not just in legal, but in moral terms, as well.
      - Patricia Evans
        
        Actually, the US presence in South Vietnam was requested by the South Vietnamese government; bombing of towns was either to destroy North Vietnamese invaders in South Vietnamese towns or to punish North Vietnam for repeatedly invading South Vietnam. You are simply repeating lies told by an aggressor North Vietnamese government.
        
        moomint
        
        Actually, you are repeating lies told by your own. The “South Vietnamese government” (dictatorship), financially and militarily supported by the Americans, was only supposed to exist for a year, preceding nationwide elections in 1956 in which the Vietminh would have won a resounding victory. To prevent the Vietnamese people from electing a government they disapproved of, the Americans advised Diem to cancel the elections and the 2nd Indochina war (genocide) began. It’s all in the Pentagon Papers, go educate yourself.
    - Sam_Sonite
      
      If we are going for historical correctness, let’s not ignore that the French, British, and US forces also developed and deployed chemical weapons in WWI, and it was used after the war by various parties.
      
      On murkier matters, it is my understanding that the executed was being pursued and changed into civilian clothing in an attempt to evade capture. Regardless of his clothing he would have been executed if caught.
      - plumplum
        
        But as a soldier, if he was in a “legitimate” fight, why would he not be entitled to protection? Of course, th conventions are/will be, ignored countless times all over the world.
        
        Patricia Evans
        
        It was legal because there were several controversial executions committed during the Franco-Prussian war of 1870 in which French civilian snipers shot Prussian troops occupying France. These were the “francs-tireurs” who claimed immunity from trial and prosecution because they were civilians. The Prussians claimed anyone using a rifle in a war not wearing a uniform was not entitled to protection from military action. The Hague and Geneva Conventions essentially “cleared this up” by confirming the Prussians’ assertion that engaging in combat during a war while wearing civilian clothing is an attempt to get protection for military forces for people who are either spies or acting as combatants – and removes the protection of these Conventions for civilians in war from them. The UN General Assembly confirmed this by a resolution in the early 1980s to punish mercenaries in Africa, unintentionally making US actions against Afghani and Pakistani fighters wearing civilian clothing legal.
        
        plumplum
        
        It is “our” side that can afford the uniforms…
        The resistance to an invasion can’t.
        Perhaps such fighters should carry some sort of token that indicates who they fight for, as an “army”, to get around this reasonable convention which has become cover for the killing of legitimate resistance.
        
        risste
        
        Why even type that? The VC had guns and explosives. Dying a shirt isn’t first-world luxury.
        
        Typing something that stupid is wasting everyone’s time.
      - Patricia Evans
        
        Your understanding is false. The executed man was commander of a unit of North Vietnamese infiltrators; they entered South Vietnam and committed murders of South Vietnamese officers and their civilian families. These murders were done in civilian clothing. Regardless of WHEN the executed man changed into civilian clothes, that he did so at all removed the protection of the Geneva Convention from him. He would have lost a civilian or military trial for murder, anyway.
        
        http://www.facebook.com/james.smythe.5201 James Smythe
        
        But there was no Geneva Protocol applicable since no war was ever actually declared in Vietnam – it was always considered, as far as the US was concerned, a ‘police action’.
    - dan
      
      ” And while two wrongs dont make a right, let us not forget the VC would do far worse to US soldiers than a bullet to the head. ”
      Thank you for stating the obvious truth that no one else is telling.
  - ?
    
    Odd, he doesn’t look old enough to be a General. How do we know he was? Is it possible he was a civilian who Gen. Loan didn’t like?
    - Patricia Evans
      
      Gen. Loan was the General in this story. The executed man wasn’t a general, but he did murder several South Vietnamese officers and their families. I wouldn’t have liked him, either.
  - http://www.facebook.com/people/Ron-Critchlow/591259031 Ron Critchlow
    
    Same was true of the American armed civilian contractors that were hung from a bridge in Iraq. They too were out-of-uniform combatants excluded from Geneva Conventions protocols.But somehow Americans didn’t shrug our shoulders in quite the same way when summary execution happened to them…
    - plumplum
      
      No, Western Mercenaries are some how a different breed to the other side, the “godless” ones.
    - risste
      
      Not true. They were in full gear and escorting a catering service. They were not attired as civilians. Talk about things you know something about.
- Thomas Murray
  
  Exactly right. How many of us would do the same thing, given the chance?
http://www.facebook.com/people/Pocono-Shooting-Range/100001567268553 Pocono Shooting Range

Why does nobody ever mention that that guy had just killed a whole family (including kids).

Everybody ignores WHY he had is brains blown out.
- JTW
  
  it’s not politically expedient to do so… Can’t be seen as being critical of the press, or supportive of the US or South Vietnam who’ve for decades been portrayed as the villains fighting an unjust war against the glorious NVA and the heroic Viet Cong “freedom fighters”…
  It’d blow the minds of too many people, get them to doubt the pushers of their daily dose of propaganda.
  - http://www.facebook.com/people/Ron-Critchlow/591259031 Ron Critchlow
    
    Sounds like you’re the one drinking the kool aid. Ever heard of Major General Smedley Butler? At the time of his death he was the most decorated Marine in U.S. history. During his 34-year career as a Marine, he participated in military actions in the Philippines, China, in Central America and the Caribbean during the Banana Wars, and France in World War I.
    
    Here’s how he summarized his distinguished military career:
    
    “I spent 33 years and four months in active military service and during that period I spent most of my time as a high class muscle man for Big Business, for Wall Street and the bankers. In short, I was a racketeer, a gangster for capitalism. I helped make Mexico and especially Tampico safe for American oil interests in 1914. I helped make Haiti and Cuba a decent place for the National City Bank boys to collect revenues in. I helped in the raping of half a dozen Central American republics for the benefit of Wall Street. I helped purify Nicaragua for the International Banking House of Brown Brothers in 1902-1912. I brought light to the Dominican Republic for the American sugar interests in 1916. I helped make Honduras right for the American fruit companies in 1903. In China in 1927 I helped see to it that Standard Oil went on its way unmolested. Looking back on it, I might have given Al Capone a few hints. The best he could do was to operate his racket in three districts. I operated on three continents.”
    - http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100003199866901 Maria Roth
      
      I think that far from big business instigating these wars they are more like a opportunistic infection that arises in the vacuum left after a war.
      The above sounds more like the bitter reminiscence of a man slightly divorced from normal peacetime society and who finds their preoccupation with monetary success at odds with his ambitions and aims.
      - plumplum
        
        Review who supplies the various materials and are clearly have mind boggling conflicts of interest.. Think “Cheney the Undead”.
    - lest we forget
      
      My father served in a war with Germany and an uncle and cousin died in Korea. I’ve often felt had Smedley lived in a later age he might have complained of what “bankers” and “interests” had done to those peoples, now living in a couple of the more prosperous nations on earth, while their fellow countrymen across borders went unmolested by freedoms concerns. Jackwagon.
    - LOUFONTINATO
      
      Major General Smedley Butler was undeniably a leftist as are you Ron. There are several retired generals today appearing as consultants on news shows who are also leftists. Whatever spin leftists try to put on things must be taken with a grain of salt.
    - http://www.facebook.com/people/Able-Witness/100003759204785 Able Witness
      
      After the U.S. pulled out of Vietnam, the communists murdered over one million civilians in the South.
- Colonel Neville
  
  Because my friend, they have spent an incurious, unread and conformist lifetime of indoctrination by leftists in virtually every level of society, who train them to parrot ONLY the correct Marxist Critical Theory tyranny of cliches and to every subject, no matter what the facts, leading to their own self-loathing yet narcissistic destruction. Now THAT’S irony.
  
  Then the left can eventually take total control of the state and of everyone’s lives completely, as they are doing now. Few people can think outside this truly abusive and evil, nihilistic brainwashing, especially as they are unaware of it and have been trained not to see it, deny it or see it as good. YouTube Yuri Bezmenov, zombietime com, discoverthenetworks org, thepeoplescube com, jihadwatch rog, steynonline com, breitbart com, hfontova org, babalublog com, globalmuseumofcommunism org, therightscoop com etc.
  
  No, really. Colonel Neville.
http://profiles.google.com/bambam0099 Bam Bam

I never knew the entire story behind this photograph and always suspected there was “more to the story”…thank you for a great article.
http://www.facebook.com/people/Sarah-E-Grove/1233192756 Sarah E. Grove

This photo is a shocking one, but I was too young at the time to have seen it when it happened. The only photo from the Vietnam era that sticks out for me is the iconic photo taken at Kent State University in Kent Ohio on May 4th, 1970.
Like this photo, it was a shock to the senses (even when I was 12 years old) to see and hear that the National Guard of Ohio was dispatched the ordered to fire live rounds at students protesting the Vietnam War on that campus. Four dead and eleven (I think) wounded, one paralyzed for life. I think that photo helped bring about the end of that insane war.
- Da nang
  
  Yesterday was 30/4, the day all of Vietnamese remember. War is brutality.
Solomon

The killing of a few Americans by the Vietcong does not justify his summary execution. Summary executions are barbaric and civilized human beings from uncivilized ones. The photographer may have felt bad for the general who pulled the trigger but the world knows better. A killer is a killer no matter how much he might argue about the nobility of his intentions and objectives.
- LOUFONTINATO
  
  War is hell. You play by the same rules your opponent plays by. To do otherwise is complete nonsense and abject stupidity. The VC would enter a village and forcibly conscript South Vietnamese peasant farmers into their ranks by putting a gun in their face and pulling the trigger if there was any objection.
  
  In this event in the early days of Tet 1968 in Saigon the un-uniformed spy had just slit the throats of the wife and children of the general in the photo plus the throats of his sister-in-law and her children. 12 family members of his in all. The spy did not kill any Americans in connection with this incident. That report is incorrect. I saw this incident on television the day it first appeared.
  
  The general was completely justified in his actions. Summary execution was entirely appropriate. The laws of the Geneva Convention were not binding on the United States since the enemy was not a signatory to the Geneva Convention and was not bound by the Geneva Convention. South Vietnam was also not a signatory to the Geneva Convention and was thus also not bound by it. War is hell. You play by the same rules that your enemy plays by.
  - LOUFONTINATO
    
    During Tet the Viet Cong and NVA murdered over 25,000 South Vietnamese civilians that were family of government officials.
- interestedobserver2
  
  He saved the trouble and expense of a court-martial for this murdering terrorist. General Loan should be applauded. And for the record, he wasn’t executing him for killing Americans — he was executing him for brutally murdering South Vietnamese citizens who weren’t even combatants. Read the Geneva Conventions some day — they state that such actions are a violation of the Laws of Armed Conflict and make the perpetrator a war criminal.
- Guest
  
  it would be interesting to see if you would still hold this view in light of the Boston Marathon Bombing. “A killer is a killer no matter how much he might argue about the nobility of his intentions and objectives”. Something tells me you would be a sympathizer to the bombers.
smitty888

First, this was not an ‘execution.’ An execution is a killing following a judicial process, regardless of how rudimentary. This is an all too frequent error in media reporting. Second, how on earth would anyone know that the victim had killed “one, two or three Americans” (who were not likely part of Gen. Loan’s family). Just a quick excuse for a casual murder, the kind of thing commonly done and carefully and thoroughly reported in Nick Turse’s new book Kill Anything That Moves.
- russell
  
  Either way… good ridance.
http://www.facebook.com/todd.duhon Todd Duhon

That is what the Left/Anti American want’s to do, disarm law abiding Americans for execution! Again guns are for protection against all tyrants and mental ill.
interestedobserver2

Correct me if I’m wrong, but the so-called “civilian” being executed was actually a Viet Cong officer (who was clearly in violation of the Laws of War, since legal combatants are required to wear something identifying them as such lest they be held guilty of violating those self-same Laws of War), and even worse had been the person responsible for killing several members of the ARVN General’s personal family. And while you might all claim that the VC’s crimes against General Loan’s family don’t excuse this, I would say two things in response: What would YOU do if you were confronted with an enemy of your nation who had just murdered your nearest and dearest in cold blood and you KNEW he was guilty of both of those things? And second, Why are you applying US standards and culture to a very different country that considers family to be sacrosanct and familial obligations and honor to be the highest form of loyalty? The bottom line is that General Loan was destroyed by this picture and his pain continued far longer than that of the monster he executed.
- LOUFONTINATO
  
  The Viet Cong and the North Vietnamese in most cases did not take prisoners. Many American soldiers who had surrendered were summarily executed moments later by the NVA and NLF.
Bigg Donn

Video of this was better…you see pulsing squirts of blood gush from hole in VC’s skull…
popseal

When some patronizing weasel tells me “Thank you for your service” when they discover I’m a Vietnam vet’, I tell the it’s too late, “I’m already pissed off!”.
- patronizing weasel
  
  That’s too bad. Maybe you shouldn’t have gone in the first place.
  - plumplum
    
    There as a little choice for most, smart arse.
- Russell
  
  I am usually one that thanks you guys. I will try to remember you next time a-hole.
http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100003199866901 Maria Roth

We have seen a good few of these images in South Africa and strangely not during the Apartheid era but under the new regime. The reaction by the populace has been markedly indifferent. Only once, certainly that I have seen, was the victim white. The reaction by the average person in your society is horror as in some sections of South African society but not overwhelmingly.

So based on these experiences I would hazard a guess that in Vietcong society this sort incident would not have raised an eyebrow never mind a uproar. I think it follows that a society that abhors this sort of action is an admirable one.
david5300

This VC had had executed several South Vietnamise Soldiers during the Tet Offensive, he found out for himself that ” paybacks a bitch”
PierrePendre

The final frame shows the general turning away and reholstering his gun while the soldier watches him. Neither is paying any attention to the shot man on the ground although from the position of his body and limbs he is obviously moving strongly and far from dead. What happened next?
- http://twitter.com/ADRIANMONK101 7HEAVENS
  
  There is a movie of this too, the person is bleeding out from the head in great spurts and will be stone dead ans top moving in less than a minute. Don’t you also wonder how the family members of the ARVN he killed fared? I’m sure he gave them no more consideration.
3rdjerseyman

OK, here’s the facts, and you can look it up: this guy was an officer in a hit unit that had infiltrated Saigon during Tet. They took over the family compound of a ARVN military police unit. They murdered the families of the ARVN officers. This particular guy had killed a mother and several children just before Loan wasted him. Yeah, he should have had a trial. Then he could have been shot legally.
Cronkite screwed the pooch on his Tet reporting. He told the American public that Tet was a huge defeat for the US and proof that the war was unwinnable. In fact, Tet was a slaughter for the VC and their PAVN allies. After Tet 68, the VC was finished and the war became completely a North vs South fight. The conventional wisdom is deeply flawed. We won the war in Vietnam. South Vietnam was abandoned byt the post Watergate congress of 74. That crime led to the deaths of millions and the continuing tyranny of the Vietnamese communists. ( They just gave some bloggers 12 year sentences- freedom isn’t free.)
- LOUFONTINATO
  
  Absolutely correct. Our objective in fighting the Second Indo-China War was to prevent the North from conquering the South. We accomplished that goal by forcing the North to sign the Paris Peace Treaty in January 1973. The North realized that this was a de-facto admission that they had failed to accomplish their objective which was to conquer the South. Thus The United States defeated North Vietnam in the Second Indo-China War. It took complicity on the part of communist American legislators to pass laws preventing the United States from providing further military materiel support to South Vietnam. This encouraged the North to violate the Paris Peace Treaty of 1973 and wage the Third Indo-China War of 1975. Thanks to the Democrat controlled communist leaning Senate and Congress of 1973 and 74 the South was no longer able to defend themselves against the Northern aggression. With no American involvement in the Third Indo-China War South Vietnam fell to the Soviet backed Northern regime.
http://www.facebook.com/christopherthomasfarrell Chris Farrell

My buddy Charlie Webber was there that day. He lives in Vegas now by the Stratosphere. It was a completely legal kill. An enemy soldier was captured out of uniform wearing civilian apparel. Our troops did the same thing in France following D-Day. When German troops were captured out of uniform wearing civilian apparel they were shot on the spot–legally. That’s what you do to enemy fighters out of uniform. Further into the campaign to defeat Germany, German units wearing American uniforms caused a lot of casualties among Allied troops. When they were captured–even if they were wounded and still alive–they were disposed of properly–I say again, PROPERLY–with a bullet in the head. A round in the head is not ‘a new level of brutality’ as artchr says, it is an execution. Nothing new about executions. Mankind has been executing people for a long time. How many South Vietnamese soldiers and civilians or American troops do you think that the enemy soldier wearing civilian clothes was able to kill during his operations as an ENEMY SPY. Execution is an effective deterrent towards those who would move stealthily among us in theaters of military operations–or even within American society–and wage war against us in such an infiltrated mode. The picture should have been made into a poster with a caption underneath reading “This is what happens to enemy spies and those who would take up arms with the enemy and not adhere to the rules of the Geneva Convention.”
If your son were killed in Iraq by a Muslim jihadist wearing civilian clothing, I don’t think you would have any problem implementing a sound policy of executing enemy fighters out of uniform. Just because the picture captured the brutality of war does not mean we discard the necessity of defeating the enemy–which often times involves killing the enemy with extreme prejudice.
http://www.facebook.com/hussein.soetoroobama Hussein SoetoroObama

The pleasant aspect of this incident is that much admired General Loan retired to the US where he had
a long and happy retirement surrounded by family and friends while the family of the executed assassin (the hippies’ hero)lived on in abject misery in the ‘Nam, complaining that their communist government never lifted a finger in aid for them and never gave them ONE BLACK CENT!!!
http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100000894166694 Buster Whitney

“War is cruelty. It cannot be refined.” William Tecumseh Sherman
Heyoka

War is a bloody and awful business. Lets not forget we were there to back up what the French didn’t finish, the colonization of Vietnam. But let us not forget the forces behind the scenes. The major players and profiteers were Brown and Root and the various high level contracting companies associated with the families founding the Fed.

In truth the VC and their methods were as barbaric as those the US troops adopted. The divisive methods used by the banking cartel have been used to destabilize entire countries. Look at Tzarist Russia… Prior to WW I the Marxists were planted in Russia to destabilize the government. Not only did Germany have a hand in it the Federal Reserve promoted and funded the Marxists. The Bush family associated with the Harriman people with Prescott Bush’ fatherin law Herbert Walker funded post war Germany after the bankers devoured the economy and destroyed the currency-much the same as they are doing now with the US Dollar. From 1924 to 1942 the Bush, with the Harrimans and Walker family financed the reconstruction and the rearming of Germany….. Nice people. Notice the date, 1942. Yes the war was on and some of the Harriman and Walker/Bush assetts were seized by the government for trading with the enemy but no sedition, no treason and the money changers family along with the Walker/Bush didn’t suffer the losses of the families who lost theirs in Europe and the Pacific.

Make no mistake the acts of Americans in the Viet Nam War were atrocious, no less the Viet Cong and the methods of North Viet Nam. I am sure that the political haggling while comrads died and were torn to pieces in front of you eyes had a lot to do with the frustration. Who can say what anyone of us would do in like circumstance. Human nature is a frail thing, even more so the ego. So don’t be so quick to judge or fail to see the real enemy……
cwon1

Would it be better if he were killed by a drone? The picture represents stunning liberal social hypocrisy then and now.

The more moving photo of the war was the girl running naked covered in napalm. The body pit shots from Mae Lai were also powerful anti-war propaganda. Film footage of atrocities of the VC were often suppressed. Why was that?
dbushik

All the left vs. right B.S. being spouted in these comments is shameful. This is an emotionally powerful image regardless of the political justification. The summary execution is powerful regardless of justification and says the same thing either way about the reality of violence and war. Knowing the context, what changes exactly? Anyone who this is flipped to just from injust emotionally because of the context is a sociopath, plain and simple. The bad guy and the good guy, assuming that frame and regardless of which you assign to which person, are both human beings. Being unable to break out of political preconceptions and recognize that reality is sad and shameful.

And also regardless, anyone who thinks having a nation of laws instead of one of men is a good thing (i.e. everyone), should have a problem with the barbarism of summary execution. What would I do if this person had klilled my family? Why, I’d want to kill them too, preferrably in a cruel and unusual fashion, and that is without question wrong, and the surviving victim without question biased and unable to make a objectively moral decision on that, so what’s the point of raising that question?
- http://www.facebook.com/kim.kirk.796 Kim Kirk
  
  Well, the Left’s B.S. is shameful…
http://www.facebook.com/clem.clement.7 Clem Clement

I personally interviewed the General while he was in hiding in the Washington area (He passed several years ago.) We did not talk about the damning photo directly. We were interested in how the war was being conducted and how the USAF was using air power in SEasia. He was a very impressive man and a facinating man to talk to. (I was in the Oral History business at the time and really worked hard to prepare for the interview. There were subjects we could not talk about. Plus I had a colonel with me who was not prepared. We started cordually with tea but comfort was not there. About that monent his kids came in from school. After they went inside I opologized and gave there names but said I could not tell gender from the Vietnamese names. The General was thrilled that I had done my homework, asked about my kids and lots more tea and cookies came out and he was willing to talk about anything. But we already knew that the Viet Cong had been caught murdering his family members in his home and the General took action. Years later he ran a resturant in Falls Church, but I never had the opportunity to visit him.

Clem Clement

Colonel USAF, Retd.
- Chipsie
  
  Thank you for your post.
A6768NAMVET

So many of you pinkoe posters weren’t even there! You only believe biased garbage you read that was written by pinkoes like yourselves! I s**t on all of you!!
AuH20reincarnate

“Tet” was a bitch and all the lefty’s hiding under their dorm beds suffering from octal rectosis need to shut their fly traps about it.

The true problem is you can’t get people to fight for a government that is as corrupt as the one their opposing. The US was complicit in the assassination of Diem and couldn’t find anyone better than Nguyen Van Thieu to replace him. The same appears to hold true for Iraq and Afghanistan.

As I recall, looking back on it from 40+ years ago, the VC and NVA killed a hell of a lot of innocent people so why get upset about one more out of hundreds of thousands of NLF dinks that got iced.
Patricia Evans

The reason the general killed this man was that the man was a North Vietnamese spy whose unit of infiltrators was responsible for the murders of several South Vietnamese officers and their families. The execution was entirely within the limits of the Geneva Convention; captured spies are subject, by the laws of war, to immediate execution. The murders made the execution moral, as well. I admire that you stated Eddie Adams’ discomfort with the image and its reception in journalism; just wanted to give more perspective on the background of the image.
Yirmin

The photographer was a complete waste of flesh. The guy was caught with the smoking gun after killing the General’s family members. Whether he was a spy or not doesn’t even come into the equation. You kill a man’s family you should be executed just like that… If you believe the worthless little sack of s*&t deserved to live then you are an idiot with not empathy.
Colonel Neville

The Viet Cong that the General shot, had just been caught at the home of one of the General’s lieutenants where this VC killer had just sliced up and murdered the lieutenants children and wife with a large knife. If there were actual objective, authentic journalistic investigations applied to this photo, this would be common knowledge.

When the Marxist Communist VC went into The Citadel in the city of Hue, they quickly rounded up over 2,000 [largely Catholic] ordinary civilians, community leaders, intellectuals etc, and those in authority, lists collated by their spies, and murdered them all in a few hours. Then they stacked them like cord wood. This, the LARGEST massacre in the Vietnam War is virtually unknown. Why? It’s not of interest to an incompetent media, nor useful to a left dominated media.

Why is 2 million boat people fleeing COMMUNISM, one million drowned in the South China Sea and 3 million murdered by the French taught Communist Pol Pot etc, not a defining theme of what totalitarian expansionist communism meant? When the Communists got to Saigon, they put hundreds of people in multistory buildings and set them on fire. Why do the over 100 million PEOPLE murdered and counting by Communist regimes, still not seriously register in the media? See answer to ‘boat people’.

Then go see globalmuseumoncommunism org, zombietime com, lookingattheleft com, hfontova org, thepeoplescube com, discoverthenetworks org, therealcuba com and babalublog com and you’ll perhaps learn why and how.

No, really. Colonel Neville.
- RIVietnameravet
  
  Oh yes and the Americans never did any such thing..
- Chipsie
  
  Thank you very much for your eloquent, thoughtful and illuminating post. What you wrote very impostant and something all Americans should know….but as you said, the Leftist view will not frame the truth in this way.
RIVietnameravet

Next time some American is killed in this way after being downed in enemy territory, i guess you folks wont have any objections?
StopJobflowoverseasnow

People seem to forget this was a war. The viet cong murdered non combatants. If you feel sorry for the guy being shot, show some compassion and sympathy for the families of all his victims. The general was doing what was necessary to stop the horrors. You might not like what General did but he certainly had the balls to carry out the punishment and should have the respect for what he did.
http://twitter.com/ADRIANMONK101 7HEAVENS

The Viet Cong that the General shot, had just been caught at the home of one of the General’s lieutenants where this VC killer had just murdered the lieutenants children and wife with a large knife. If there were actual objective, authentic journalistic investigations applied to this photo, this would be common knowledge.
http://www.facebook.com/people/Dean-Jackson/100000528158955 Dean Jackson

In fact, there is film of this event too. When the shot is fired into the side of the head, a long line of blood jettisons out, continuing even when the hostile is lying on the ground. The last frame has clearly been photo shopped!
http://www.facebook.com/people/Able-Witness/100003759204785 Able Witness

This VC along with his cohorts had just fragged a home killing some little girls (I think it was 4, but can’t remember now). One of the little girls was this general’s God-child (he and her dad were close). Me, I would have knee-capped Charlie then gut-shot him to let’m die slow for simply fragging kids on purpose (they knew that kids were in that house, their dad was a city official, everybody knew him).
Disabuser

“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 people?“

What would you think if people from half a world away invaded your country, bombed it, conducted chemical warfare on it and killed millions of your own people? And what would you think if one of your own people assassinated someone fighting for your country’s independence?
Sueychop

General Nguyen ended up in Arlington, Va. He had it pretty good, really. Nice family, too. The VC got what he deserved.
Scarface13

The VC had just attacked an orphanage…something the “press” failed to mention as well…If you have ever seen the mangled bodies of children, you would be hard pressed not to want to execute the perpetrator!
http://www.facebook.com/grob109 Russell White

Get a grip! “This image is forever etched into the minds and history books of both past and future generations…”