TABLE OF CONTENTS
Primary Sources
“South Vietnamese Officer Executes a Viet Cong Prisoner” Photograph (1968)
Combat Area Casualties (1998)
Memorandum for the President from Henry Kissinger: “Possible Responses to Enemy Activity in South Vietnam” (1969)
Agenda and Testimony of William Colby (1970)
Quang Nam Province: Phoenix/Phung Hoang Briefing (1970)
About the Author
Fritz Fischer is a Professor of History and Director of History Education at the University of Northern Colorado. He is the 1998 recipient of the College of Arts and Sciences award for outstanding teaching and the recipient of the Mortar Board Outstanding Teacher Award in 2003 and 2006.
The Tet Offensive
“South Vietnamese Officer Executes a Viet Cong Prisoner” Photograph (1968)
Annotation
This has become for many the iconic vision of the confusion and failure of the U.S. adventure in Vietnam. It depicts the Chief of the South Vietnamese national police force, General Nguyen Ngoc Loan, summarily executing a suspected Viet Cong insurgent on the streets of Saigon during the Tet offensive. Eddie Adams won the Pulitzer Prize for this shot. Such seemingly gratuitous violence, splashed across the American media during the month of the Tet Offensive, convinced many American leaders, including President Johnson, that the war was a dangerous lost cause. Such beliefs contributed to the argument that Tet was the beginning of the end of U.S. involvement, despite the fact that the war lasted five more grueling and bloody years for American soldiers.
Adams, Eddie. “South Vietnamese Officer Executes a Viet Cong Prisoner". From the Dolph Briscoe Center for American History, University of Texas at Austin.