Nguyễn Ngọc Loan

Major General Nguyễn Ngọc Loan (11 December 1930 – 14 July 1998) was a South Vietnamese general and chief of the South Vietnamese National Police.

Loan was born in 1930 to a middle-class family in Huế and was one of eleven children.

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.

Loan received pilot training in Morocco before returning to Vietnam in 1955, serving with the Republic of Vietnam Air Force (RVNAF) for the next decade.

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.

Loan's career followed Kỳ's, and when Kỳ became commander of the RVNAF, Loan served as chief of staff.

During the February 1965 Operation Flaming Dart airstrikes targeting North Vietnam Loan flew as Kỳ's wingman.

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.

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.

For example, in December 1966 he rejected the arrest of Saigon mayor Van Van Cua 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 VC infrastructure.

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.

Loan was a staunch South Vietnamese nationalist, refusing to give Americans special treatment in his jurisdiction.

Loan's men were also involved in the arrest of two VC operatives on 15 August 1967 who had been engaged in sending out peace feelers to U.S. officials behind the back of the South Vietnamese in an initiative code-named Buttercup.

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 VC 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.

Nguyễn Văn Lém (also known as Bảy Lốp) was a Vietcong captain.

Loan gained international attention when he summarily executed a handcuffed prisoner of war named Nguyễn Văn Lém on February 1, 1968, in Saigon, Vietnam during the Tet Offensive.

Nguyễn Văn Lém was a Viet Cong (VC) member.

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.

Despite the determination of the Immigration and Naturalization Service that Loan committed war crimes, owing to which he was liable for deportation back to Vietnam, the then US President, Jimmy Carter, personally intervened to halt the deportation proceedings.

On 1 February 1968, during the Tet Offensive, he was captured in a building in the Cho Lon quarter of Saigon, near the Ấn Quang pagoda.

Lém wore civilian clothing at the time of his capture.

Handcuffed, he was brought to Loan, who then summarily executed him on the street using his sidearm, a .38 Special Smith & Wesson Bodyguard Model 49 revolver, on allegations of murdering South Vietnamese Lt. Col. Colonel Nguyen Tuan, his wife, six of his seven children, and 80-year-old mother, A reporter for The New York Times later wrote that this likely violated the Geneva Conventions.

Max Hastings, writing in 2018, said that some of the allegations made against Lém were true.

Only one of Lt. Col. Tuan's children, Huan Nguyen, survived the attack and went on to become the first Vietnamese American promoted to rear admiral in the United States Navy.

Hastings also wrote that American historian Edwin Moise "is convinced that the entire story of Lém murdering the Tuân family is a post-war invention."

Hastings concluded that "the truth will never be known."

The execution was captured on photo by Associated Press photographer Eddie Adams and on video by NBC News television cameraman Võ Sửu.

After the execution, Loan told Adams: "They killed many of our people and many of yours."

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.

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