General Loan: "Probably the most feared man in the country"

And what about General Loan in all of this?  Can he really be characterized as a "good guy?"

It is 1966, and General Loan is responsible for creating a whole mess of turmoil for the Vietnamese government that was in power at the time, before Thieu and Ky would be "elected" in October of 1967. (1)

Political Activities of Brigadier General Nguyen Ngoc Loan (LBJ Library)

Seems the good General not only dislikes communists but he is not to keen on the "southerners" who were on his side.

Political Activities of Brigadier General Nguyen Ngoc Loan (LBJ Library)

So how does the General spend his time....

Political Activities of Brigadier General Nguyen Ngoc Loan (LBJ Library)

A regular J. Edgar Hoover...or Richard Nixon!

Political Activities of Brigadier General Nguyen Ngoc Loan (LBJ Library)

Remember my last post when I asked WHO are we fighting for?

Political Activities of Brigadier General Nguyen Ngoc Loan (LBJ Library)

Still a free-press mind you, just nothing to print it on.

Political Activities of Brigadier General Nguyen Ngoc Loan (LBJ Library)

C'mon....if that's not Hoover and Nixon-like nothing is.  Makes Carl Rove look minor league!

Political Activities of Brigadier General Nguyen Ngoc Loan (LBJ Library)

And if they said "No?"

Another good read is another secret document on the same matter, with this little gem:

CIA summary on the activities of Brigadier General Loan, Jan 26, 1967

Which, if you look at it objectively, tells you the bind the US was in (see last post).  This is the reality we faced.  It was not going to be a fair election, the Vietnamese military had to win or they would have just taken over anyway.  The other reality here, is that because of this, Robert Kennedy's remarks on Feb 8, 1968 were also spot on:

You cannot expect [the South Vietnamese] people to risk their lives and endure hardship unless they have a stake in their own society. They must have a clear sense of identification with their own government, a belief they are participating in a cause worth fighting for. 

So when the New York Times writes:

It kind of sounds like they are accurately describing General Loan, I mean, unless you want to discount all of the secret documents reference above and in my previous posts.

And if the NYT's description of General Loan is true, when the ABC cameraman, who is Vietnamese, said he was "afraid of General Loan" that sounds like a pretty accurate feeling, all things considered.

Once again I ask you; is General Loan a "good guy" because he was one of us or because Eddie Adam's said he was?  Or, is it more likely that he fell somewhere between "good guy" and "most feared man in the country?"

Nevertheless, it would appear that the category one would place General Loan in, "good" or "feared" seems to be wholly dependent on what side of the fence he saw you on.

Next Post: Carl von Clausewitz, the CIA, and General Loan

.

And it's one, two, three WHO are we fighting for?

Before I can continue on with why I feel General Loan should not be viewed as a "good guy," I need to delve into a bit of background on the Vietnam situation in 1967. All of this is, in my opinion, necessary to understand General Loan the man.

I am going to start this post off with a picture:

Wearing matching flight suits and scarves, South Vietnam’s Premier Nguyen Cao Ky strolls hand-in-hand with his wife as they make aninspection tour of the battlefield near Bong Son, South Vietnam on February 4, 1966. Ky visited the area where American and SouthVietnamese troops killed a reported 700 Communist guerillas in recent battles.  (Photo: © Bettmann/CORBIS

The question I want to pose is this: can one looking at the picture tell the difference between drama and information?  Can one read meaning into what is shown?  Is this photo a half-truth?

There is a reason for showing that particular photo.  In my opinion it supports what was known to the US and to the Vietnam people about the men who were leading them.  This should become evident as you read on.

Historian David Culbert writes:

Robert Kennedy, who entered the presidential race on 10 March 1968, made his first major speech following Tet on 8  February, at the Chicago Book and Author luncheon.  He insisted that Tet was a military disaster for the Americans, and that the South Vietnamese government was "a government without supporters."

I'll let you read the full speech by Robert Kennedy to see if you come to the same conclusion.  Anyway, more to my point in trying to support why General Loan is not a "good guy," lets look at what Robert Kennedy said in this speech and how his comments on  February 8th 1968 compares to what the CIA knew at the time.  All of that, and the above photo too.

Here is what Robert Kennedy said in his speech:

You cannot expect [the South Vietnamese] people to risk their lives and endure hardship unless they have a stake in their own society. They must have a clear sense of identification with their own government, a belief they are participating in a cause worth fighting for. 

People will not fight to line the pockets of generals or swell the bank accounts of the wealthy. They are far more likely to close their eyes and shut their doors in the face of their government—even as they did last week [Tet offensive]. 

More than any election, more than any proud boast, that single fact reveals the truth. We have an ally in name only. We support a government without supporters. Without the efforts of American arms that government would not last a day.

General Loan was one of those Generals.  He was not flashy like his best friend Ky, but he was just as powerful.  In addition to Adams calling Loan a "good guy" he also called him a "goddamn hero."  I have my doubts about that.

So what do we know about Loan and these Generals Robert Kennedy speaks about.  Was it really a government without supporters?  Without the efforts of American arms would that government have lasted?

Here is what the CIA states in their declassified document.

October 1998

Only relevant sections referencing General Loan are included.  Interesting tidbits of information and enlightenment are in blue.

In mid--1966, with US combat forces carrying the burden of offensive operations against the Communists, government, stability was still the dominant political issue. Station disengagement from Palace liaison had now endured a full year, while CIA expanded its programs in the countryside. Ky was planning elections to a' constitutional constituent assembly that summer, and the problem of campaign financing drew the Agency back into involvement with the military leadership."

One of Prime Minister Ky's closest confidants was Gen. Nguyen Ngoc Loan, who as chief of both the National Police and the Military Security Service also conducted liaison with the Station on intelligence and security matters, He importuned the Station for money to replenish police funds he had used to subsidize the campaigns of Ky allies, Ambassador Lodge asked the Station to oblige him, and Headquarters approved a subsidy of 10 million piasters (about $85,000) which the Station passed to Loan on 25 August.

This return to active involvement with the leadership coincided with the departure of Gordon Jorgensen. His replacement, John Hart, had run other large Stations [redact] He seems not to have shared Jorgensen's reservations about direct dealings at the top, and in midOctober asked Headquarters to consider giving Loan another 14 million piasters to replace police and MSS funds diverted to the election campaign. According to Loan, Ky needed this support to avoid having to declare to his peers in the Military Directorate that he had used money from the Prime Minister's secret fund for political purposes. Hart noted that Ky was trying at the moment to resolve another cabinet crisis, and thought Lodge would approve CIA support designed to strengthen Ky's position

No reply has been found, and the proposal may have been overtaken by the controversy over Loan himself that came to a head when Headquarters suggested his removal. As for the original 10-million-piaster subsidy, while it may have spared Ky some embarrassment, its influence on the electoral outcome was apparently slight, as the only available reference to its use concerns support to two unsuccessful candidates in Da Nang,

The discussion over Loan's future - it did not address the means by which he might be unseated - brought into focus once more the perennial problem facing the Agency and the rest of the US Mission as they looked for Vietnamese officials meriting US support. Loan was energetic and highly intelligent, manipulative, and entirely loyal to Ky. But he did not look to the US for guidance, and in personal style sometimes appeared to be playing the clown. COS Hart later recalled having liked him; even if Loan "never agreed with anything I ever said," he was "absolutely honest," and perhaps the only Vietnamese official of Hart's acquaintance who would openly disagree with an American

To Russ Miller, who saw them together after he returned to Saigon in early 1967, the fastidious Hart looked repelled by Loan's "scruffy fatigues and open-toed sandals," and put off as well by Loan's chronic unavailability for an appointment. But there were more substantial reasons for reservations about Loan. Among them were his contempt for individual legal rights and for programs aimed at ingratiating the government with the peasantry, an attitude that put him at odds with American convictions on these issues.

Whatever his retrospective opinion of Loan, Hart described himself  as "not an admirer" when the Ambassador pressed him, in October 1966, to object to the Headquarters call for Loan's removal. Swallowing his reservations. Hart agreed that the police chief was indispensable to Ky at a moment when the US was counting on Ky to produce a constitution and a stable civilian government. Loan soon became important to CIA as well, as events unfolded that led to the Station's two most important political initiatives of 1967.

We seem to be mightily involved with forming the government that is to be out ally.

In the first of these initiatives, the Station tried to establish clandestine contact with the National Liberation Front for South Vietnam (NLFSVN. usually abbreviated NLF), which although directed from Hanoi was composed mainly of southern Vietnamese. The Station proposed to identify presumed moderate elements in the NLF and to set up a commununications channel to any of these who might be interested in a dialog that excluded Hanoi. The second initiative involved a renewed effort tn deal with perpetually unstable government in Saigon. Here, the May 1967 arrival of Ellsworth Bunker as US Ambassador and the approach of presidential elections in South Vietnam ushered in a new CIA effort to influence Vietnamese politics,

Say what?  Yeah, that needed to be underlined, italicized, and made bold!  A few paragraphs later....

Ky's man, General Loan, visited Washington in May [1967] and made it plain that he saw no reason not to exploit the government apparatus to get Ky elected to the presidency. CIA Headquarters seemingly paid little attention to this, perhaps because DDP Richard Helms and FE Division Chief Colby were more interested in the approach to the NLF. Helms forcefully urged more initiatives like the one to Tan Buu Kiem of the NLF Foreign Affairs Committee, and Loan tepidly agreed that the Central Intelligence Organization might be the best instrument for this. Meanwhile, in Saigon, the rumor mill impeded American efforts to be perceived as having no preference between Thieu and Ky. The chief of the police Special Branch told a Station agent that the rumored imminent removal of John Hart and Ed Lansdale would serve local politicians as proof of US bias against Ky, if it took place, and of favoritism toward him if it didn't.

Ellsworth Bunker had been in Saigon less than two weeks when on 12 May [1968] Prime Minister Nguyen Cao Ky announced his presidential candidacy. Unlike Lodge, Bunker had no reservations about using CIA's political contacts in Saigon. He promptly enlisted the Station to help fulfill a Washington mandate to ensure fair elections, and to prevent a split in the Vietnamese military while the US preserved its neutrality between Thieu and Ky. As it turned out, Bunker needed all the help he could get, as this objective was threatened from the outset by General Loan, who upon his return from Washington had put into conspicuous action his belief in using government resources to promote Ky's bid. Washington and the US Mission now switched their earlier positions on Loan, as State rejected Bunker's 19 June proposal to force Loan's removal, and suggested using Miller to approach .Ky directly to curb campaign excesses. George Carver, the DCT's Special Assistant for Vietnam Affairs (SAVA), thought Loan's activities a symptom of Saigon's political malaise, not a cause, and suspected that Bunker's proposal reflected little more than the influence of John Hart's "personal distaste for and dislike of Loan."

Miller saw Ky on 21 June, probably before the Station learned of Washington's response to the Bunker recommendation. Ky acknowledged the possibly damaging effects of Loan's activism, and said he intended to remove Loan from command of the Military Security Service, and reduce his engagement in the electoral campaign. Ky also proposed to convene all province and district chiefs to enjoin them against any campaign excesses on his behalf. Ky did not know, presumably, that the two aides who had spent five hours with him that day, advocating precisely these measures, were [redacted] Station guidance. Ky said nothing of this 'session to Miller, who had the satisfaction of hearing his message presented as if it were Ky's own idea. The Station reported that the Ambassador was delighted, and that he proposed to use the Station's "advisory services" as a regular supplement to the direct consultation with Ky being urged on him by State.

Bunker and the Station thought they would enjoy more leverage if the Station funded a front organization of religious sects and political groups favoring Thieu and Ky and supported those of its contacts running for the National Assembly. But Washington was smarting under the exposure of CIA funding to the US National Student Association and other domestic organizations and refused even to consider it. Secretary of State Rusk cabled Bunker in Agency channels, urging him to establish a closer relationship with Thieu even while pursuing the CIA advisory effort with Ky, and to ensure that Thieu and Ky arrived at a clear mutual understanding of their respective roles during and after the election.

Who's yer daddy!

Miller succeeded in getting Phong to press the funding question with Ky, who released 5,000,000 piasters in mid-July to support the religious political front. Ky had instructed Phong both to keep Miller fully informed or campaign planning and to give full consideration to American suggestions. Phong began to do both, and his 20 July account of Thieu's having "swallowed a bitter pill" in accepting a circumscribed presidential role lent credibility to the claim of Ky's ascendancy. Miller noted that Phong seemed to think he could run a subtle campaign, keeping government employees from any egregious abuses while encouraging them to advertise Saigon's accomplishments. But the Station apparently feared that an election completely honest could be an election lost: it accepted without comment Phong's stated intention to exploit General Loan's police apparatus "in critical areas which require more effort to swing the vote to Thieu and Ky."

....and I'm proud to be an American.....

On 26 July, Miller gave Phong a list of platform suggestions approved by Bunker, and the next day Ky said they agreed with his own thinking, especially those dealing with civil service pay, corruption, and increased emphasis on the rural population. Ky did not, apparently, vet the ideas with Thieu, whose participation in the campaign he at one point derided as "completely silly." Meanwhile, the campaign was faltering, at least partly for lack of money, and Ky threatened that, lacking US funding support, he would be forced to rely on General Loan to extract "loan-type levies on various citizens with resultant, unfavorable repercussions." Phong wanted to avoid this kind of coercive fundraising, and the need to make deals with unsavory people, but Miller stood on his instructions. The Station rationalized that an impecunious Thieu-Ky campaign might look more like an honest campaign, but also anticipated the same effects from an unresolved money crunch that Phong did. A few days later, Phong mentioned the distribution of 8,000,000 piasters in the Mekong Delta. Ky had not revealed the source of the money, and Phong could only surmise that it came from General Loan.

What did Robert Kennedy say..."We support a government without supporters."  That 8 million had to come from supporters.  Isn't that what" loan-type levies" refers to?

In the week before the validation vote on 2 October, the Station mobilized its political contacts, making fifty separate approaches aimed at preventing an embarrassing repudiation of the election results. One opponent of Thien and Ky, in an access of "naivete or crudeness," acknowledged that he and his allies were concerned less with rectifying electoral fraud than with "the possibility of extracting a certain profit through political blackmai1." Whatever the effect of the Station's pressure tactics, the members of the Provisional Legislative Assembly were left in no doubt about the US preference for a validated result. The Constituent Assembly approved the result, 58 to 43, and Thieu and Ky were sworn into office on 31 October 1967.

What did Robert Kennedy say..."People will not fight to line the pockets of generals or swell the bank accounts of the wealthy."

In the last week of November, with the authenticity of the Dang channel still at issue, General Loan provoked a crisis that threatened to end the affair amid mutual embarrassment and recrimination. Miller confronted him with evidence of Saigon leaks about the operation, and at the same time expressed US concern about rumors that Loan was resigning as national police chief. Loan confirmed having submitted his resignalion, adding that Ky had rejected it. But Loan anticipated trouble with Thien's new civilian government, saying that its apparent indifference to pro-Communists among its appointees would inevitably collide with his aggressive approach to countersubversion.

On the even more contentious question of the Dang channel, Miller wanted to know why the government, after ten months of cooperation on approaches to the NLF, now appeared to be sabotaging the venture. US objectives had not changed, he noted, from the original goals of prisoner exchange and communication on "any broader political matters the NLF might wish to discuss." Loan insisted that he still favored the program, but acknowledged some disagreement on tactics. At the policy level, he noted, there was President Thicu's fear that the Americans were acquiring too much leverage on Saigon in pressing for release of VC prisoners. And there might indeed have been leaks, Loan added, but as a result of poor security in the Interior Ministry and not as a matter of deliberate sabotage.

The depth of the disagreement over tactics became evident when Miller and Loan met again the next day. Miller, speaking for the Ambassador, wanted the release of all the prisoners requested by Tran Bach Dang, while Loan insisted that the NLF would regard such a concession as a sign of weakness on the anti-Communist side. He thought only two should go back, Tong and the bearer of Dang's original letter, pending the release of prisoners in NLF hands. Miller insisted that such an insignificant gesture would provoke Dang into closing the channel. Loan then took refuge in a jurisdictional argument, asserting that Thieu's delegation of authority to him did not apply to the question at hand, which involved not just operational planning but strategic national policy. He would not, he said, decide whom to release, and Miller asked if he could at least quote him to the Interior Minister as having no objection to the US proposal. After a painful silence, Loan agreed.

Miller tried to restore a collegial atmosphere, emphasizing the need for a joint approach to the venture, and wondered aloud whether Loan would really prefer to see bilateral US-NLF contacts that excluded the South. Loan pessimistically but presciently replied that it would surely come to that, if not now then later. When this happened, he said, Saigon's forces would face the combined NLF, VC, and North Vietnamese Army alone.

On 1 December [1967], seeing President Thieu on Ambassador Bunker's instructions, Miller got an even stonier reception to the US proposal to release up to ten VC. Thieu accused thc Americans of naivete and Loan of playing anti-Thieu politics by opposing the release in order to make the President look like an American puppet if he granted it. Professing anxiety that this could undermine his support in both the military and the population at large, Thieu said that, against the background of his internal political problems, prisoner exchange was a "drop of water in the ocean

                                                                   -------------------

Here is how Robert Kennedy ended his speech:

No war has ever demanded more bravery from our people and our Government—not just bravery under fire or the bravery to make sacrifices—but the bravery to discard the comfort of illusion—to do away with false hopes and alluring promises. 

Reality is grim and painful. But it is only a remote echo of the anguish toward which a policy founded on illusion is surely taking us. 

This is a great nation and a strong people. Any who seek to comfort rather than speak plainly, reassure rather than instruct, promise satisfaction rather than reveal frustration—they deny that greatness and drain that strength. For today as it was in the beginning, it is the truth that makes us free. 

Was Culbert correct about how Robert Kennedy viewed Tet and our involvement in Vietnam?  Did Robert Kennedy "insist that Tet was a military disaster for the Americans, and that the South Vietnamese government was "a government without supporters."  Or did he say and mean something different, something closer to maybe the truth?

And what about General Loan in all of this?  Can he really be characterized as a "good guy?"

Well that's only one CIA author's opinion of what went down and Loan's involvement,  I got more....

Next Post: General Loan: "Probably the most feared man in the country"

Why General Loan is not a "good guy"

Okay, so maybe I should have titled this: "Why General Loan should not be described as a "good guy""

Who am I to decide who is good and bad?  I mean that's been the point of these posts, hasn't it?  How should we look at someone, how should we classify an act, what factors are important in making a decision on how we should feel about something?

What started me down the Eddie Adams path was a completely baseless assertion from a General Brady and my response to it.  In the process of researching the Tet Offensive, I came across the Eddie Adams photograph and a whole bunch of "facts" regarding what took place and how the photo helped/hurt the Vietnam war effort.

If you read my blog (Woot! I have three readers now!) you will notice I have a problem with half-truths, lies, propaganda, and ignorance.  Opinion is one thing, misstating something because you failed to fully research it is another.  I hold a lot of contempt for people who should know (General Brady) and use their power/title (the "General") to further an ideology or perpetuate a false history using innuendo, bogus information, and outright lies.  Tet can be looked at objectively for what it was, it does not need to be rewritten using a made-up event and conversation with General Vo Nguyan Giap, the supreme communist commander during Tet.

The same goes for the Eddie Adams photo, Adams himself, General Loan, and Nguyen Van Lem.  The truth is the truth, regardless of where it leads or what it tells you about us, them, or humanity in general.

We have on record that Eddie Adams called General Loan a "good guy."  Now he may have been figuratively speaking, as in - good guy because he was on our side, but that's not what I hear when I listen to him say "good guy."

In my last post, I discussed what makes some one good or bad, and how which side of the fence you are on helps form your response.  I contend that it should not matter.  Bad is bad and good is good.  Which brings us back to General Loan and Adams' assertion that he was a good guy.

Hopefully I have been able to support why I believe Eddie Adams used that term to describe the man.  I don't think Adams was naive, I do think he was mislead by both General Loan and those that needed the incident to be downplayed.  That, and his guilt over the harm the photo caused General Loan (see post) lead to the designation of "good guy" he used.

So, looking at it objectively, was General Loan a "good guy?"

I contend that he was not.  I base this on a lot of background information, CIA reports, and observations from other journalists.  I'll show you what I mean, but first I want to print the one account that sealed it for me, an incident that takes General Loan from a "good guy" to not a very nice human being.

From Tom Buckley's: "Portrait of an Aging Despot", Harper's, April 1972 Page 72:

This was after the Tet incident in 1968.  Does that sound like someone worthy of the title "good guy?"

Oh, but wait...there is more.


Next Post: And it's one, two, three WHO are we fighting for?

.

The "he was a good guy" perspective.

I think, of all the things I have read, heard, and seen regarding February 1st, 1968 when General Nguyen Ngoc Loan's shot Nguyen Van Lem point blank at An Quang Pagoda in Saigon during the Tet Offensive, the one that perplexes me the most is the statement by Eddie Adams about General Loan:

"He was a good guy.  He was fighting for America with Americans.  I think he was a goddamn hero."

I am not perplexed that he said it, for I think I understand Eddie Adams pretty well and I can accept the various issues in play that formulated it.  I don't even think it was inappropriate for him to say, however, the only man that could be accorded the appropriateness to make such a statement was Eddie Adams.

What perplexes me is how Eddie Adams allowed himself to make it.  It is not an objective statement borne out by facts, facts which he should have known or at least had questions about regarding General Loan.  It is easy to understand Eddie Adam's guilt over what happened to General Loan after the photo was taken.  One need only read these quotes to see why the aftermath the photo wrought weighed so heavy on his mind.

"Photographs, you know, they're half-truths ... that's only one side...." Adams said. "He was fighting our war, not their war, our war, and ... all the blame is on this guy." (NPR)

"He was very sick, you know, he had cancer for a while," Adams said. "And I talked to him on the phone and I wanted to try to do something, explaining everything and how the photograph destroyed his life and he just wanted to try to forget it. He said, 'Let it go.' And I just didn't want him to go out this way." (NPR)

"He never blamed me for the picture. he used a cleche that we here all the time.  Eddie, you were doing your job, and I was doing mine.  I guess the picture...I'm told it did good things...but I don't want to hurt people either...I really dont..  It really bothers me.  thats not my intention in other words, being a photographer, thats not what I want to do." (Newseum) 

Nevertheless, Eddie Adams was amiss in stating that General Loan was a "good guy."  He wasn't wrong to say it, per say, because that's how he saw it.  He was wrong to hang the title of "good guy" on General Loan, because he was not a good guy, and not simply because of what he did in that photo.

First of all, is one a "good guy" because he is on our side?  If so, that would make those involved in the My Lai Massacre good guys. Were the Japanese good guys for what they did in Nanking China?  Or because they were are enemy at the time, they must be seen as "bad guys."  Or, are they only bad guys to the Chinese and neutral to us? Assuming "goodness" is a result of what side of the fence you are on, nothing can be viewed as fundamentally bad.

Does one's side play anything of importance in determining what acts are morally bad or debased; corrupt; perverted?  Two members of the House of Representatives, Harold Sawyer of Michigan and Elizabeth Holtzman of Brooklyn worked feverishly to have General Loan deported for what they called his "moral turpitude."

What they contended was that General Loan's actions that day was "conduct that shocks the public conscience." Now we can split hairs on how the law views moral turpitude, but that places a definition as what is important and not the actions of General Loan on February 1st, 1968.  In this case, can my conscious be shocked without having to claim moral turpitude?  Or, does that fact that I find this shocking make moral turpitude the only logical conclusion for General Loan's actions?

Regardless of my conclusion, what side of the fence I am on should play no part in how I derive the outcome leading to that conclusion.  If it does, then "shocking" is in the eye of the beholder.  It is subjective.  It's based on external and environmental factors....well. come to think of it, it is!

There was a documentary on TV a while back (I can't recall the name or station) which showed identical twins watching the same movie but not together.  It looked at how each twin reacted to different disturbing scenes.  As expected, they both showed similar reactions.  Except when one of the twins was a nurse and the other was not.  Scenes of an operation elicited no reaction from the nurse, but uneasiness for her sister.

What does that have to do with General Loan?  Does perception play a part in how an act should be perceived?  Was the film of the operation in and of itself something that should be seen as distasteful and bring about a feeling of revulsion.  Or was it simply another act that should be viewed as nothing more sickening than any other acts that came before it?  In this case, can we condemn one twin's non-reaction as depraved or a perversion? Should the other twin be more deserving of the title caring and sensitive...more humane?

"But an operation performed by a doctor and nurse is not the same thing as firing a bullet into the head of a bound man at point-blank range" you might be thinking.  Or is it?  In both cases the need to perform an act in a way that many of us would find distasteful at having to watch is present for both.  I can't bear the thought of slicing into a man's stomach no more than I can see myself pointing a revolver and releasing a bullet into another man's brain.  Should I condemn the doctor and nurse for doing that thing I would never allow myself to do?

Well, that's a no-brainier (no pun intended) because the doctor is just doing his job.  He desires the stomach no harm and the means should justify the end.  But what about General Loan?  Wasn't he just doing his job that day?  Didn't the means justify the end he hoped to bring about as well?

"I respect the Vietcong in uniform.  They are fighting men like me.  People know when they are wonded I take care of them.  I see they get to to the hospital.  But when they are not in uniform, they are criminals and the rule of war is death." (1)

"What do you want us to do?  Put him in jail for two or three years and let him go back to the enemy?" (2)

So maybe perception does play into it.  Maybe which side of the fence you are on will allow you to see the same thing differently than how the person on the other side views it.  But that brings was right back to square one.  If perception dictates "goodness" then there is no fundamental idea of what is "bad." And more to the point, what is bad enough to be classified as "morally bad or debased; corrupt; perverted."

When Eddie Adams called General Loan a "good guy" he obviously based that classification on a lot of factors other than one lone event captured on film.  Those factors, however, significantly biased his opinion of General Loan, making the statement of "good guy" inappropriate.  Without his connection to the man, the photograph, and the aftermath, would Adams have made that same statement?  I think not.  If Adams looked at General Loan under a "veil of ignorance" he would have seen him for what he was.

So maybe it's not that I am perplexed that he made this statement.  What perplexes me is the many dynamics in play that formed the words Adams said to describe General Loan.  It's not as simple as folks think it is.  It's not about good and evil, black and white, patriot or enemy.  Of all the things said by Eddie Adams, this was the most untenable statement of them all, all things considered.

Without his guilt over what the photo unleashed, and with full knowledge of the kind of man General Loan was, I am pretty sure Adams would not have called him a "good guy."  He would have seen General Loan as no different than any other person in a war situation; neither a hero nor a villain; simply just another victim of the circumstances they found themselves in.

Of course I am speculating here.  But from my side of the fence, that's how I see it.

(1) As reported in Harper's April  1972 article "Portrait of an Aging Despot" page 72:
(2) As reported in Harper's April  1972 article "Portrait of an Aging Despot" page 72


Next Post" Why General Loan is not a "good guy"


.

But a photograph is absolute.

Note: I have been neglecting my blog.  I noticed that this was never posted.

My head hurts.  We had a snow day today and work was canceled.  So I spent the whole day looking up anything I could find on Eddie Adams, General Loan, Vo Suu, Howard Tuckner, and Nguyễn Văn Lém.

Believe it or not, there is a not a lot of information out there.  There's a lot of crap too, especially crap that does nothing but reprint what somebody else has said - word for word.  Can't understand that one, I mean, why bother?

There is also a lot of crap designed to present information as factual but in no way shape or form is it real.  For example, the Wikipedia page on Nguyễn Văn Lém, the guy General Loan shot has the following blurb

Though military lawyers have yet to definitively decide whether Loan's action violated the Geneva Conventions for treatment of prisoners of war (Lém had not been wearing a uniform; nor was he, it is alleged, fighting enemy soldiers at the time), where POW status was granted independently of the laws of war; it was limited to Viet Cong seized during military operations.

This one sentence - in a very professional sounding paragraph - is attributed to Major General George S. Prugh (1975). "Prisoners of War and War Crimes". Law at War: Vietnam 1964-1973. Vietnam Studies. United States Army Center of Military History. Retrieved 2006-10-24.

Well I went to the link listed.  This statement was not there.  I even went to the actual document referenced...nothing.  So where did the Wikipedia author(s) get that bit of information?  Do a search for it and you will find it used a lot, but no where will you find it referenced in any academic or governmental websites.  I even searched the Texas Tech University's Vietnam database.  Nothing of the sort was said by General Prugh that I can find.

Which begs the question: why go to all the trouble to write a very scholarly sounding paragraph, attach a real person's name to it, and then link not one, but two different documents, from the guy, as where this information came from?

It's a hoax.  And yet again a hoax that uses someone's real name to perpetuate a myth needed for approval.  I think I know why it is used in this case, and it goes back to Eddie Adams statement:

Words and pictures have a continuing struggle for primacy. In my mind, a person can write the best story in the world; but a photograph is absolute.

His photo showing General Loan shooting Nguyễn Văn Lém (aka: Captain Bảy Lốp) was absolute.  I wrote about this a few posts back.  There is a difficulty rectifying what you see with what you feel; with what you believe; and with what you hold sacrosanct. If he is a good guy then he can't be doing a bad thing.  So either you make him a bad guy or you make the thing he did a good thing.  Those that can't accept that he was wrong to do shoot him in that manner, work to find ways to justify General Loan's behavior.

One of those ways is to argue over the "right" to carry out the assassination because Lém and Loan were not under the Geneva convention.  Hence the argument over Lem's POW status.  They also bring up the fact that Saigon was under Marshall Law and shoot to kill was warranted.  It goes on and on.

Even the simple "well he got what he deserves" justification falls short because we are a nation of laws, and what Loan did was against any law.  Period.  It cannot be justified if you believe that our behavior is either morally based or we are a "nation of laws, not of men.”  Nothing, short of a belief in anarchy or misanthropic leanings, would allow for behavior such as this.

What is needed, in my opinion, is to stop trying to justify it and start trying to understand it.  It is not about good and bad, saints and devils, or heroes and villains.  It is about how easily humanity can be pushed aside and the constant vigilance need to ensure that it does not.

As another humanitarian put it: Beware the thief in the night.


.

Nguyen Van Lem; He's just a plain vanilla V.C.

Note:  I have been neglecting my blog while I worked on other things.  I just noticed that I never posted this.

My last post focused on how the deeds of Nguyen Van Lem (aka: Bay Lop) - the man shot by General Loan on February 1st, 1968 during the Tet  offensive - have been exaggerated to the point of being ridiculous.  Yet they persist and are spread from one book to another and from one website to another.

So lets look at "former Judge BAI AN TRAN, Ph. D. Professor of the National Police Office Academy, Vietnam." full accounting of what Nguyen Van Lem had done right before General Loan shot him:

Now I suppose one could argue that Nguyen Van Lem may have been the one who killed the Lt. Col, and his six kids.  But that happened in Go Vap according to President Nguyen Van Thieu.  The execution took place at the An Quang Pagoda which was on the other side of town from Go Vap:

That's a long way to go from start of the attack at Go Vap to the An Quang Pagoda where he was caught.  And if my time line is correct, Nguyen Van Lem was shot by General Loan about 32 hours after the start of the Tet Offensive.

And what about the reason for killing Lieutenant Colonel Nguyen Tuan attributed to Nguyen Van Lem?

After communist troops took control of the base, Bay Lop arrested Lieutenant Colonel Nguyen Tuan with his family and forced him to show them how to drive tanks. When Lieutenant Colonel Tuan refused to cooperate, Bay Lop killed all members of his family including his 80-year-old other. There was only one survivor, a seriously injured 10-year-old boy.

Here is what the Combat Operations After Action Report (RCS: MACJ3-32)(K-1) has to say about what took place in Go Vap.

So now we know that Nguyen Van Lem could not have forced anyone to drive a tank since there were no tanks there.  Unless you don't want to believe the AAR - then you should probably stop reading because all I will be doing is supporting my thesis with data I believe has not been manipulated in order to better tell the Adams/Loan/Lem story.


The story of Nguyen Van Lem is just that, a story.  Propaganda designed to take the sting out of what was shown to the world in that photo and news footage of General Loan shooting him. 


Even Eddie Adams was was taken in by it:

Well, we found out later, it wasn't 'til about a couple days later, that we found out that the guy was a Viet Cong lieutenant, and he had  killed the policemen from the second  story of the building [i]n the area where we were, and they had grabbed him  immediately.  And he supposedly had  papers saying that he was a lieutenant in the Viet Cong. (1)

And 

And I didn't find this out much later, but the prisoner who was killed had himself killed a police major who was one of Loan's best friends, and knifed his entire family.  The wife, six kids...  the whole family.  When they captured this guy, I didn't know that.  I just happened to be there and took the picture. (2)

And with Adams unknowingly, or unwittingly, or reluctantly on board with it, the remaking of General Loan from a "villain" to a "godamn hero" was now on its way.


.

Nguyen Van Lem; Could he be made more despicable?

Do a Google search using the terms; General Loan, Eddie Adams, Nguyen Van Lem and you will get a boat load of websites and blogs that seem to repeat the same three themes:

1. The media showed the photo and film without context.
2. General Loan had the right to execute the man under the Geneva Convention because he was "not in uniform."
3. Nguyen Van Lem (Bay Lop) was responsible for killing scores of people before he was shot by General Loan.

Each site parrots the same basic wording and contention of the next.  So bad info, incorrect info, misleading info, biased info, and just plain ridicules info is passed on as fact.

The purpose of these posts on Eddie Adams, General Loan, and Nguyen Van Lemon is to put factual - supported - information out there, cite it correctly, and then as objectively as I can, paint a picture of the as-true-as-possible context.  We owe it to the future to get this past described correctly - unless you think its okay to believe something that is false at best, propaganda at worst.

I wrote in a previous post about all the different ways Nguyen Van Lem (aka: Bay Lop) has been described - including how General Loan misidentified the man he shot even up till 1979 (Buckley, Esquire, June 5, 1979):

So what I want to look at this time, is how Nguyen Van Lem (aka: Bay Lop) was made out to be so gosh-darn evil whereby a bullet to his brain was not just justified, but warranted.

Now if you read my post on why I believe he was shot, you would conclude that if I am correct in my analysis, who he was or what he did played not a part in the pulling of the trigger by General Loan.  So why this need to emphasize just how downright nasty Nguyen Van Lem's deeds that day were?

It all comes back to context.  Not the real context in play that day, but the need to have what transpired that day fit into a neat little box whereby we can say General Loan - who was on our side - did not do anything wrong that day, therefore we can support him.  He can't be a "villian," he needs to be a "goddamn hero."

But he did do something unequivocally wrong that day.  He summarily executed a bound man.  That fact is undeniable.  Why he did it or who he did it to does not negate that fact.  And instead of understanding it for what it is, understanding the dynamics in play that day, understanding the situation at hand, understanding General Loan's background and motivations, we instead try to justify them simply as right/wrong so we can choose a side - hawk/dove, good guys/bad guys, won the war/lost the war.

And because you can't justify what General Loan did with any factual mandate (Bible allows it, war allows it, Geneva convention allows it), it has to become justified using the fine art of storytelling.  So the truth has been intermixed with a false series of explanations and dialog.  All brought forth as a way to say "he ain't a bad guy, he's one of us...and we ain't bad guys!"

Now the purpose of my posts on this topic is not to condemn, vilify, elevate, absolve, or trivialize General Loan.  It is what it is, and as much as I hate that statement, well, it is what it is.  What's important to me is that factual information be presented in an effort to understand what took place that first day in February, 1968.  And by understanding, one can decide if General Loan should be condemned, vilified, elevated, absolved, trivialized, and, if possible, unequivocally forgiven.

The context that many of these hawkish/right leaning sites expound on is what has become diluted and tainted over these last forty years, and its genesis seems to have begun right after the photo and the film were shown to the world the next day.

So lets look at this oft quoted statement by "former Judge BAI AN TRAN, Ph. D. Professor of the National Police Office Academy, Vietnam."

Minutes before he was captured, Bay Lop had killed a RVN policeman's wife and all of his family members including his children. Around 4:30 A.M., Nguyen Van Lem led a sabotage unit along with Viet Cong tanks to attack the Armor Camp in Go Vap. After communist troops took control of the base, Bay Lop arrested Lieutenant Colonel Nguyen Tuan with his family and forced him to show them how to drive tanks. When Lieutenant Colonel Tuan refused to cooperate, Bay Lop killed all members of his family including his 80-year-old mother. There was only one survivor, a seriously injured 10-year-old boy. (1)

Now look at the speech given by President Nguyen Van Thieu before the Joint Session of the National Assembly (Senate & House) February 9, 1968 (Page 61 & 62)



Does that sound kind of familiar?

Now, compare that with what the New York Times quotes Eddie Adams as stating:

[M]r. Adams, who accepted Brig. Gen. Loan's contention that the man he shot had just murdered a friend of his, a South Vietnamese army colonel, as well as the colonel's wife and six children.

Doesn't that just seem a bit too coincidental?  Its such a fitting response to take the sting out of what everyone had just witnessed the good guys doing.  "Oh yeah...well he killed six kids!"

Now my point in all of this is not to exonerate or condemn the man on the left or the man on the right in that famous picture. It is simply to have that photo judged truthfully.  It's impact cannot be denied but the stories of the how and why has lead people to a false dichotomy.  In other words, if you are going to call General Loan a "hero" or a "despot" or a "villain" or judge his actions as acceptable or him personally as "morally unfit" you should do so based on as accurate a description of the persons involved - as well as what took place and the possible motivation/thinking/actions of the participants - as can reasonably be supported.  

That's the only context that is necessary.  Anything else is just propaganda.

.