General Nguyen Ngoc Loan (Nguyễn Ngọc Loan) (1931 - July 14, 1998) was the Republic of Vietnam's Chief of Police. He was depicted summarily executing Nguyen Van Lem, a Vietcong agent, in front of an NBC cameraman and Associated Press photographer Eddie Adams on February 1, 1968. The photo and film would become two of the most famous images in journalism and started to change the American public's views on their involvement in Vietnam. The photo won Adams the 1969 Pulitzer Prize for spot news photography, though he was later said to have regretted the impact it had.
Nguyen Van Lem was captured, his hands bound, he was brought in front of the journalists. Loan pulled out his revolver and immediately executed the prisoner. Loan later insisted that this was justified because the prisoner had been the captain of a terrorist squad that had killed the family of one of his deputy commanders.
Concerning General Loan and his famous photograph, Eddie Adams wrote in Time Magazine: "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 soldiers?'"
During the U.S. withdrawal, Loan left Vietnam in 1975. He moved to Virginia and opened a pizza restaurant, which he gave up after his past had been disclosed to the public in 1991. He died of cancer in 1998 in Burke, Virginia, a Washington, D.C. suburb.
The photographer Eddie Adams later apologised in person to General Loan and his family for the irretrievable damage it did to his honor when he was alive. When General Loan died, he praised him as a hero of a just cause.
General Nguyen Ngoc Loan executes Nguyen Van Lem a NLF officer
Notable ARVN Generals
External links
- Footage of Nguyen Van Lem's execution. http://www.konfliktbilder.de/video/schuss_internetversion.mov Warning: Very graphic material.
- Voice autobiography of execution by Photographer Eddie Admas http://www.newseum.org/warstories/interviews/mp3/journalists/bio.asp?ID=22
-
General Nguyen Ngoc Loan's Obituary http://www.wellesley.edu/Polisci/wj/Vietimages/vcexec.htm from The New York Times, July 16, 1998
- Republic of Vietnam Armed Forces Reunion 2003 http://community.webshots.com/album/92765972MdbewI
