The dramatic photo is the pistol shot fired by a South Vietnamese official into the head of a captured Viet Cong. It happened during the Tet offensive, when South Vietnamese National Police Chief Gen. Nguyen Loc Loan executed Bay Lop in the streets of Saigon. Griffiths writes, "This incident does show the horror and brutality of war, but it has been portrayed for the most part as unprovoked.
Photographer Eddie Adams said Lop 'was the same guy who killed one of Loan's officers and wiped out his whole family.'" Former South Vietnamese Prime Minister Nguyen Cao Ky writes in his book "Buddha's Child" that Lop was captured "carrying papers identifying himself as a Viet Cong captain in the act of murdering a police sergeant, his wife and three small children. The guerrilla wore civilian clothes. The Geneva Conventions do not extend the protections of prisoner-of-war status to spies, mercenaries and guerrillas who fail to distinguish themselves from civilians." Burkett notes similar executions of German Saboteurs during World War II's Battle of the Bulge, without trials. "Gen. Eisenhower was completely within his authority to order the executions. So was Gen. Loan." The difference was the treatment by the press and the fact that Loan performed the execution personally.