The Myth Behind the Famous Eddie Adams 'Execution' Photo

By: David D. Perlmutter A renowned photojournalist and a decent man died this week. Eddie Adams's most famous image, of course, was the photograph he took on February 1, 1968, outside a Buddhist temple in Saigon, then the capital of the Republic of Vietnam. It showed the summary execution of a Vietcong "suspect" by a South Vietnamese officer. Adams, a legendary Associated Press photographer, subsequently won the Pulitzer Prize. The picture -- politicians, commentators, generals and historians have claimed -- "lost the war" for America.

As with most photo icons, the real story is different from the mythology; unfortunately, the myth is so compelling that reality seems an unwelcome intruder into the frame. But the job of the news photographer is to try to tell the truth as near as possible with film, tape or pixels, and Eddie Adams deserves the record to be set straight.

It's also important to understand how the public reacts to "shocking" photos from war -- in 1968 and in 2004.

The day before the Adams photo was taken, the start of the Vietnamese New Year (Tet), Vietcong and North Vietnamese soldiers attacked most major cities in the south. The insurgents also carried out assassinations against anyone associated with the government.

Twenty-four hours later, Adams and a number of other reporters, including an NBC film crew, heard about fighting near the famous An Quang pagoda. When they arrived, as Adams recalled, South Vietnamese marines pulled a barefoot young man into view, then, "Some guy walked over ... pulled a pistol out. As soon as he went for his pistol I raised the camera thinking he was going to threaten him [the prisoner]." Adams pressed the shutter of his camera at the moment a bullet entered the victim's brain.

The gunman was Nguyen Ngoc Loan, chief of the South Vietnamese National Police. After firing the shot he put his gun away, a small Smith & Wesson detective special. Then he faced the journalists and, in one reported version, stated, "Many Americans have been killed these last few days and many of my best Vietnamese friends. Now do you understand? Buddha will understand."

NBC's evening newscast showed a film of the events to its 20 million viewers. Eddie Adams's still photo appeared on the front page of many major newspapers.

No one denies the fame or the striking appearance of the image -- but did it lose the war? Hundreds of leading politicians, scholars, military men and pundits on all sides of the Vietnam issue have agreed that it, or the film footage, did.

One historian wrote that the "impact was arguably the turning point of the war." NBC newsman John Chancellor argued, "People were just sickened by this, and I think this added to the feeling that the war was the wrong war at the wrong place."

However, there is no actual evidence the picture had any significant effect on American public opinion. In fact, support for the war went up slightly in the weeks following the appearance of the image. NBC received only about 90 letters in response, most of them non-political. By every real-world measure we have, the "power" of the picture was vastly overestimated at the time -- and still is today.

Why? First, the executed man was nearly always identified as a "Vietcong suspect." (He was later confirmed to be a Vietcong officer.) In short, he was the enemy -- one of the people who was killing Americans. So it's not surprising that people might not be distressed at his death. In wartime, the American public cares most about the fate of American soldiers.

Second, in time of crisis, public opinion generally rallies around the president's policies if our commander-in-chief shows decisive leadership. (Such was the case with Clinton in Somalia, when he chose to get out decisively.) President Johnson was depressed by the Tet offensive; he practically hid in the White House. By the mid-summer of 1968, it was clear that the war was indeed drifting and that nobody planned either to lead us to victory or call the boys home. That, and not a single visual image, was why most Americans turned against the war.

The lesson for modern political leaders is clear: Don't panic about the release of "shocking" pictures. Rather, show strong leadership in trying to fix the problem of which the picture is but a symptom, not a cause. In turn, journalists should be wary about making extraordinary claims of powerful effects of even the most sensational-looking images, such as the photos from Abu Ghraib prison.

The Saigon execution is a great photograph, and an important one. But Eddie Adams's legacy is slurred when his picture is said to have lost the war in Vietnam. It also defames the American public to maintain that their opinion about war and peace can be so easily swayed.