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General in '68 Vietnam execution dies: "On Feb. 1, 1968, Loan was director of South Vietnam's national police and the North Vietnamese had just begun the Tet Offensive, their huge military push southward. Firefights had broken out all over Saigon, and Loan's police were trying to rid the South Vietnamese capital of Viet Cong guerrillas. Loan led the prisoner, his hands bound, onto a street corner and in front of a group of journalists pulled his pistol and shot the prisoner point-blank in the head. The general told the newsmen that the prisoner was a known Viet Cong captain.



Eddie Adams' photo of the execution won a Pulitzer Prize for The Associated Press. NBC also showed film of the execution. Adams said yesterday that Gen. Loan's actions were misinterpreted because of the picture. 'The guy was a hero. America should be crying,' said Adams, now a free-lance photographer. 'I just hate to see him go this way, without people knowing anything about him.' Adams said the man Loan shot had been seen killing others and that Loan was justified in executing him........

Leslie Cullen, a military history professor at Texas Tech University who specializes in the Vietnam War, said the man Loan summarily executed was involved in killing a policeman and his family. 'Not that such a thing was justified, but people had the impression from press reports that this guy was killing him just to be killing him,' Cullen said. 'People had a question in their mind, `Do we support people who do this?''"

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