- General Nguyen Ngoc Loan Executing a Viet Cong Prisoner in Saigon is a photograph taken by Eddie Adams on February 1, 1968 showing South Vietnamese National Police Chief Nguyen Ngoc Loan executing Viet Cong officer Nguyen Van Lem in Saigon during the Tet Offensive. The event was also captured by NBC News film cameras, but the Adams' image remains the defining image.
The photo won Adams the 1969 Pulitzer Prize for spot news photography, though he was later said to have regretted the impact it had. The image became an anti-war icon. Concerning General Nguyen and his famous photograph, Eddie Adams later wrote in Time:
"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?'"
"How do you know you wouldn't have pulled the trigger yourself?" Adams asked.
Eddie Adams later apologized in person to General Nguyen and his family for the damage it did to his reputation. When General Nguyen died, Adams praised him as a hero of a just cause.
Susan