Execution Of Nguyễn Văn Lém - Wikipedia

Loan in interviews

According to Oriana Fallaci in her book Nothing, and So Be It, Loan explained shooting Lém in a 1968 interview by arguing that Lém "wasn't wearing a uniform and I can't respect a man who shoots without wearing a uniform... I was filled with rage."[20] In a later 1972 interview with Tom Buckley of Harper's Magazine, when asked why he killed Lém, Loan said "When you see a man in civilian clothes with a revolver killing your people ... what are you supposed to do? We knew who this man was. His name was Nguyễn Tân Đạt, alias Hàn Sơn. He was the commander of a sapper unit. He killed a policeman. He spit in the face of the men who captured him."[15]

Lém's previous actions

As part of the Tet Offensive, the Viet Cong conducted the targeted killings of prominent people who opposed them, including civilians.[21] Some authors have suggested that Lém was involved in such activities.[22] A story emerged during the 1980s that Lém had just murdered a police major, a subordinate and close friend of General Loan, and the major's whole family. Eddie Adams believed and repeated this story. "It turns out that the Viet Cong lieutenant who was killed in the picture had murdered a police major – one of General Loan's best friends – his whole family, wife, kids, the same guy. So these are things we didn't know at the time."[23] "I didn't have a picture of that Viet Cong blowing away the family."[24] In 2008, reporting emerged that Lém had murdered the family of Lieutenant Colonel Nguyễn Tuấn, who was not a subordinate of Loan but an officer in the armored forces of the ARVN.[25] Vietnam war historian Edwin E. Moïse, while acknowledging the murder of Tuấn and his family by Viet Cong, believes the story of Lém's culpability is South Vietnamese propaganda, noting the later stories about Lém's actions were not part of Loan's initial explanations. Noting this position, historian Max Hastings wrote "the truth will never be known".[26][27] A similar skeptical assessment was made by researcher Christopher Saunders.[28]

Other stories[from whom?] about Lém assert that he was a turncoat who had been working for both the police and the Vietcong, or that he was a small time Vietcong informant who was captured while simply trying to escape.[29]