Nguyễn Ngọc Loan

Nguyễn Ngọc Loan
Born (1930-12-11)11 December 1930[1]
Huế, French Indochina (present-day Vietnam)
Died 14 July 1998(1998-07-14) (aged 67)
Burke, Virginia, U.S.
Allegiance  South Vietnam
Service/branch  Republic of Vietnam Air Force (VNAF)
Republic of Vietnam National Police
Rank Major General
Battles/wars Tet Offensive

Nguyễn Ngọc Loan (Vietnamese: [ŋʷǐənˀ ŋâwkp lʷāːn]; 11 December 1930 – 14 July 1998) was South Vietnam's chief of National Police.

Loan gained international attention when he summarily executed handcuffed prisoner Nguyễn Văn Lém, on February 1st, 1968 in Saigon, Vietnam during the Tet Offensive.[2][3] Nguyễn Văn Lém was a Việt Cộng member.[2] The event was witnessed and recorded by Võ Sửu, a cameraman for NBC, and Eddie Adams, an Associated Press photographer. The photo and film became two famous images in contemporary American journalism.

Early life

Loan was born in 1930 to a middle-class family in Huế, and was one of eleven children.[4] He studied pharmacy at Huế University before joining the Vietnamese National Army in 1951. He soon studied at an officer training school, where he befriended classmate Nguyễn Cao Kỳ.[4] Loan received pilot training in Morocco before returning to Vietnam in 1955, serving with the Vietnamese Air Force (VNAF) for the next decade.[5]

He received additional training in the United States at some point during this period, enabling him to speak English fluently by the time he rose to prominence in the late 1960s. Despite gradually taking on administrative tasks involving intelligence and security, Loan flew as wingman to Kỳ, now commander of the VNAF, during the February 1965 Operation Flaming Dart airstrikes targeting North Vietnam.[5]

Career

In June 1965, when Kỳ became prime minister of South Vietnam, he promoted Loan to colonel and appointed him director of the Military Security Service. This was followed within a few months by an appointment to director of the Central Intelligence Organization, giving Loan simultaneous control of both military intelligence and security. He was further made director general of the Republic of Vietnam National Police in April 1966.[6] Holding these positions enabled Loan to wield immense power, and he supervised the suppression of the early 1966 uprising of Kỳ's rival General Nguyễn Chánh Thi and dissident Buddhists.[4] When Kỳ agreed to become vice president to Nguyễn Văn Thiệu in 1967, the former relied on the support Loan provided for him in order to retain power.[5]

Loan was a staunch South Vietnamese nationalist, refusing to give Americans special treatment in his jurisdiction. For example, he rejected the arrest of a Vietnamese mayor by American military police and insisted that only South Vietnamese authorities could arrest and detain South Vietnamese citizens. He also insisted that U.S. civilians, including journalists, fell under South Vietnamese jurisdiction while in Saigon. Loan's uncompromising stand caused him to be regarded as a troublemaker by the Presidency of Lyndon B. Johnson. Loan was also skeptical of the U.S. CIA-backed Phoenix Program to attack and neutralize the clandestine Việt Cộng infrastructure.

Loan's men were also involved in the arrest of two Việt Cộng operatives who had been engaged in sending out peace feelers to U.S. officials behind the back of the South Vietnamese. His stand against such "backdoor" dealing, and his opposition to releasing one of the communist negotiators, reportedly angered the Americans, and forced them to keep both him and the South Vietnamese better informed of diplomatic dealings involving their country.

Loan was an accomplished pilot—he led an airstrike on Việt Cộng forces at Bù Đốp in 1967, shortly before he was promoted to permanent brigadier general rank. The Americans were displeased at his promotion, and Loan submitted his resignation shortly thereafter.

The South Vietnamese cabinet subsequently rejected Loan's resignation. The United States under the Nixon administration later negotiated a separate deal with the North that left communist troops in good tactical position within South Vietnam, and forced acquiescence by the South Vietnamese. Later action by the U.S. Congress cut off aid to South Vietnam during the final northern conquest in 1975.[7] In addition to his military service, Loan was an advocate for hospital construction.[8]

Tet offensive

Nguyễn Văn Lém (also known as Bảy Lốp),[9][10] was a Việt Cộng member.[2] On 1 February 1968, during the Tet Offensive, he was captured in a building in the Cholon quarter of Saigon, near the Ấn Quang pagoda.[11][12] Lém wore civilian clothing at the time of his capture.[9] He was brought to South Vietnamese National Police Chief Nguyễn Ngọc Loan, who then summarily executed him on the street using his sidearm, a .38 Special Smith & Wesson Bodyguard revolver.[13][11]

The execution was captured on photo by Associated Press photographer Eddie Adams and on video by NBC News television cameraman Võ Sửu.[14] After the execution, Loan told Adams: "They killed many of our people and many of yours."[12] Võ Sửu reported that after the shooting Loan went to a reporter and said ''These guys kill a lot of our people, and I think Buddha will forgive me.''[14][15] Previously on that day, one of General Nguyen Ngoc Loan's aides and his family had been killed by Viet Cong fighters.[12][16]

The photograph and footage were broadcast worldwide, galvanizing the anti-war movement.[12] Eddie Adams' photo won Adams the 1969 Pulitzer Prize for Spot News Photography.[17] The image became an anti-war icon.

A few months after the execution picture was taken, Loan was seriously wounded near Saigon by machine gun fire that led to the amputation of his leg. Again his picture hit the world press, this time as Australian war correspondent Pat Burgess carried him back to his lines.[9] He was evacuated to Australia and then to the United States. Afterwards, Loan remained in the United States for an extended period as Thiệu consolidated his power by replacing Kỳ supporters. Upon his return to Saigon, he was appointed to a position that involved long-range planning, but lacked actual power.[5]

Later life

In 1975, during the fall of Saigon, Loan fled South Vietnam and to the United States.[4] There he moved to Dale City, Virginia.[18] He then opened a restaurant called "Les Trois Continents" in the Washington, D.C. suburb of Burke, Virginia at Rolling Valley Mall.[19][20][21] The restaurant served hamburgers, Vietnamese cuisine, and pizza, but was described as more of a pizzeria.[22][23] Loan also worked as a secretary in a Washington firm at this time.[23] When interviewed, Loan stated "All we want to do is to forget and to be left alone."[23]

Adams later apologized in person to General Nguyễn and his family for the damage it did to his reputation.[24]

House of Representatives member Elizabeth Holtzman forwarded a list of Vietnamese officials who may have committed crimes (including Loan) to Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS).[25][26] House of Representatives member Harold S. Sawyer later requested the Library of Congress investigate Loan.[25][26] In 1978, the INS contended that Loan had committed a war crime, following a report by the Library of Congress which concluded that the summary execution of Nguyễn Văn Lém had been illegal under Vietnamese law,[26] in an attempt to revoke his permanent resident status to ensure that he could not become a United States citizen.[27] They approached Adams to testify against Loan, but Adams instead testified in his favor and Loan was allowed to stay. The deportation was halted by the intervention of United States President Jimmy Carter, who stated that "such historical revisionism was folly".[28][29]

Loan visited the Vietnam Veterans Memorial and praised it.[30]

In 1991, he closed his restaurant and went into retirement.. Adams recalled 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 fucker".[31][14][27]

Death

Nguyễn Ngọc Loan died of cancer on 14 July 1998, aged 67, in Burke, Virginia.[14] After his death, Adams praised him: "The guy was a hero. America should be crying. I just hate to see him go this way, without people knowing anything about him."[8][32]

Eddie Adams wrote a eulogy to Loan 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?"[8][33]

Personal life

Nguyễn was married to Chinh Mai, with whom he raised five children.[14]

References

  1. ↑ Thiếu tướng Nguyễn Ngọc Loan (in Vietnamese) Archived 6 April 2005 at the Wayback Machine.
  2. 1 2 3 News, ABC. "Stunning AP Images of Vietnam War from Stunning Images of Vietnam War". ABC News. Retrieved 2018-07-04.
  3. ↑ "[Vietcong prisoner, Nguyễn Văn Lém, being executed by police chief General Nguyễn Ngọc Loan in Saigon]". The Library of Congress. Retrieved 2018-07-04.
  4. 1 2 3 4 Barnes, Bart (1998-07-16). "NGUYEN NGOC LOAN DIES AT 67". Washington Post. ISSN 0190-8286. Retrieved 2018-07-06.
  5. 1 2 3 4 Moise, Edwin E. (2005). The A to Z of the Vietnam War. Lanham, Maryland: Scarecrow Press. pp. 283–284. ISBN 9781461719038.
  6. ↑ Tucker, Spencer C.; Anh, Ho Dieu (2011). The Encyclopedia of the Vietnam War: A Political, Social, and Military History (2nd ed.). Santa Barbara, California: ABC-CLIO. pp. 829–830. ISBN 9781851099610.
  7. ↑ Stanley Karnow (1983). Vietnam: A History. Viking Press. pp. 181–239.
  8. 1 2 3 Adams, Eddie (27 July 1998). "Eulogy: General Nguyen Ngoc Loan". Time. (Subscription required (help)).
  9. 1 2 3 Faas, Horst (October 2004). "The Saigon Execution". The Digital Journalist. Retrieved 4 July 2018.
  10. ↑ "Iconic Vietnam War Photos to be Exhibited in Vietnam for First Time". Newsweek. 2015-06-11. Retrieved 2018-07-04.
  11. 1 2 Faber, John (1978). Great News Photos and the Stories Behind Them. New York: Dover Publications. p. 136. ISBN 9780486236674.
  12. 1 2 3 4 "The Vietnam War, Through Eddie Adams' Lens". NPR.org. Retrieved 2018-07-04.
  13. ↑ Buckley, Tom. "Portrait of an Aging Despot", Harper's magazine, April 1972, page 69
  14. 1 2 3 4 5 "Nguyen Ngoc Loan, 67, Dies; Executed Viet Cong Prisoner". New York Times. 16 July 1998. Retrieved 5 July 2009.
  15. ↑ EndPlay (2018-01-31). "AP BOOK EXCERPT: The Tet Offensive's first 36 hours". WSBTV. Retrieved 2018-07-07.
  16. ↑ "In an instant, Vietnam execution photo framed a view of war". Associated Press. Retrieved 2018-07-07.
  17. ↑ "Pullitzer Prize Winners". www.pulitzer.org. Retrieved 2018-07-05.
  18. ↑ "Saigon's Killer Cop in U.S." (PDF). San Francisco Chronicle. April 29, 1976. Retrieved July 10, 2018.
  19. ↑ Tiede, Tom (26 March 1998). "Ex-Viet cop: I want to live a quiet life". Ludington Daily News. Retrieved 22 August 2014.
  20. ↑ Friedman, Andrew (2013). "Nguyen Ngoc Loan's Pizza Parlor". Covert Capital: Landscapes of Denial and the Making of U.S. Empire in the Suburbs of Northern Virginia. University of California Press. pp. 196–219. ISBN 9780520956681. Retrieved 22 August 2014.
  21. ↑ "Followup". Chicago Tribune. 29 November 1976. p. 16. Retrieved 5 July 2018 – via Newspapers.com. (Subscription required (help)).
  22. ↑ Cohen, Richard (1978-11-07). "From Saigon to Burke, There is No Way Out". Washington Post. ISSN 0190-8286. Retrieved 2018-07-10.
  23. 1 2 3 "Famous Vietnam Photograph Figure Running Restaurant BURKE, Va. (AP)". The Kane Republican. April 29, 1976. Retrieved 2018-07-10.
  24. ↑ "1968: The year in pictures". CNN. Retrieved 2018-07-07.
  25. 1 2 Buckley, Tom (June 1979). "The Villain of Vietnam - Esquire Classic". Esquire. Retrieved 2018-07-07.
  26. 1 2 3 Christopher Dickey (November 3, 1978). "U.S. Acts to Deport Saigon Official Who Killed Bound Prisoner in 1968". Washington Post. Retrieved July 3, 2018. The INS now contents in a legal proceeding against Loan that he should have been tried in Vietnam for the execution, a war crime, and that his permanent resident status should be rescinded on the grounds of "moral turpitude." ... But Sawyer said that he also then requested the Library of Congress to research the issue. The results of the library's report, which concluded that summary execution of such nature were illegal under Vietnamese law at the time, were forwarded to INS last spring.
  27. 1 2 White, Linda (17 July 1998). "A life taken out of context in a split second". The Baltimore Sun. Retrieved 5 June 2018.
  28. ↑ "Carter bids to halt Viet general's deportation". The Miami News. 6 December 1978. p. 9C – via Newspapers.com. (Subscription required (help)).
  29. ↑ "Viet executioner won't be deported". Detroit Free Press. New York Times Service. 2 December 1978. p. 2A. Retrieved 5 July 2018 – via Newspapers.com. (Subscription required (help)).
  30. ↑ "Vietnam:Where Are They Now?". Washington Post. 1985-04-19. ISSN 0190-8286. Retrieved 2018-07-10.
  31. ↑ Adams, in the documentary An Unlikely Weapon (2009), directed by Susan Morgan Cooper
  32. ↑ "General In Famed Viet Photo Dead". Retrieved 2018-07-06.
  33. ↑ Adams, Eddie (2001-06-24). "Eulogy". Time. ISSN 0040-781X. Retrieved 2018-07-07.
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