The Saigon Execution Photo: The One Image That Won a War and Destroyed a Life
The bullet entered the skull at 2:30 p.m. on February 1, 1968, and kept traveling through history.
The man on the left is wearing a plaid shirt. His hands are tied behind his back. His face is a mask of pain so total it looks like a second wound. The man on the right holds a .38 caliber snub-nosed revolver six inches from the first man’s temple. His arm is extended with the mechanical certainty of someone who has done this before. His face is calm. The shutter of Eddie Adams’ Leica M2 opens and closes in 1/500th of a second, and in that instant, the bullet is still inside the barrel, the blood has not yet left the skull, and the war in Vietnam is already over.
But the photograph hides something the people who circulated it never wanted seen—something that would cost the photographer a Pulitzer, the subject a life of exile, and the American public the ability to ever trust their own government again.
