With North Vietnam’s Tet Offensive beginning, Nguyen Ngoc Loan,
South Vietnam’s national police chief, was doing all he could to
keep Viet Cong guerrillas from Saigon.
As Loan executed a prisoner who was said to be a Viet Cong captain,
AP photographer Eddie Adams opened the shutter.
Adams won a Pulitzer Prize for a picture that, as much as any,
turned public opinion against the war.
Adams felt that many misinterpreted the scene, and when told in 1998
that the immigrant Loan had died of cancer at his home in Burke, Va.,
he said,
“The guy was a hero. America should be crying. I just hate to see
him go this way, without people knowing anything about him.”
