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Sunday, April 14, 2002

By Michael A. Fuoco, Post-Gazette Staff Writer

Even today, more than three decades hence, the two Vietnam War-era photographs spring to life, screaming death and suffering.

Associated Press photographer Eddie Adams was in Saigon in 1968 when he photographed one of the Vietnam War's powerful pictures. In it, he captured South Vietnamese police chief Brig. Gen. Nguyen Ngoc Loan executing a Viet Cong officer with a pistol shot to the head. (Eddie Adams, Associated Press)

Brutal and merciless, the Pulitzer Prize-winning photos are difficult to look at but even more difficult to ignore.

In one, Associated Press photographer Eddie Adams froze a moment of death in Saigon in 1968 as South Vietnamese police chief Brig. Gen. Nguyen Ngoc Loan executed a Viet Cong officer with a pistol shot to the head. The general's nonchalance violently contrasts with the contorted countenance of a man whose life has ended.

In the other, Associated Press photographer Nick Ut captured the horrific aftermath of a South Vietnamese napalm attack June 8, 1972, that mistakenly struck civilians and their own troops.

There's much happening in Ut's photo -- smoke ominously rises in the background, a young boy screams in the foreground, a woman flees with a child -- but the eye is drawn elsewhere. In the center, 9-year-old Kim Phuc, her clothes burned away by the jellied gasoline, her skin unspeakably burned, wails with a horror that sears the soul.

These iconic photographs of suffering, death and destruction will be the centerpieces of a discussion by their principals April 23 at West Virginia University. Titled "Faces of War: Pictures that Won Hearts and Changed History," the 7 p.m. event in White Hall, Room 21, is free and open to the public.

The event will feature Adams, Ut and Phuc, now a United Nations Goodwill Ambassador. After snapping the photo, Ut saved Phuc's life by rushing her to a hospital. She underwent 17 operations and spent 14 months recovering.

In 1986, after being used by the Vietnamese for propaganda films, Phuc went to Cuba to study pharmacology and met the man who would become her husband. Summoned to Moscow, the couple sought asylum after their jet stopped for fuel in Canada. They and their two children now live in Toronto.

The WVU event was organized by the university's Ogden Newspapers Visiting Professor George Esper, an AP correspondent in Vietnam for eight years and bureau chief for two.

On June 8, 1972, Associated Press photographer Nick Ut, captured the aftermath of a South Vietnamese napalm attack at Trang Bang that mistakenly struck civilians and their own troops. Dominating the photo is 9-year-old Kim Phuc,, whose clothes have been burned away by the jellied gasoline. The pair will join photographer Eddie Adams for an April 23 discussion at West Virginia University titled "Faces of War: Pictures that Won Hearts and Changed History." The event begins at 7 p.m. in White Hall, Room 21. (Nick Ut, Assoicated Press)

Esper, who worked with Ut in Vietnam, said the power of Ut and Adams' work is unquestionable.

"Those photos ... really showed what war is, the horrors of war, the pain and agony of war. When those photos hit the United States, indeed, when they hit the world, they furthered the public opinion against the war," Esper said.

The irony, Esper said, is that the governmental/military backlash to those photos and other reporting of the Vietnam War has so restricted subsequent war coverage that the full story of what is occurring in armed conflict is not getting out.

"As a photographer or reporter [in Vietnam], you could go anywhere, you could cover anything. There were no restrictions if you had courage, which Eddie and Nick did, and if you would take a risk, which they did," Esper said.

"But after the Vietnam war ended, the government, the military, were very angry at the press. They blamed the press for undermining public support with the type of photos of the napalm girl and the execution.

"They viewed it as negative reporting, so they decided that, in the future, they weren't going to give the press access. They were going to shut us out, and that's what they've been doing ever since Vietnam."

Ut, now a photographer with AP's Los Angeles bureau, agreed that the types of photos he and Adams shot could not have been taken under today's combat journalism restrictions.

"I was a young kid and I would see people die almost every day," said Ut, 52, who was born in Vietnam and began covering the war when he was 16.

"You'll never see pictures like you saw from Vietnam. You'll never see any more pictures of dead bodies, people burned with napalm, pictures like Eddie Adams'. I think the American public should [see what's really happening]," said Ut, whose brother, also an AP photographer, was killed in combat. Ut himself was wounded three times.

"Photographers now covering the war ... come back and say they are restricted. They have to stay there at the hotel. They can [photograph] only refugees. They don't see B-52s, they don't see black smoke, they can't show any action, the action of the government. People don't get the full impact."

Chris Hondros, 32, a Pittsburgh photographer employed by the New York-based news-photo agency Getty Images, can attest to that.

Speaking by cell phone last week from Ramallah in the West Bank, Hondros and fellow journalists were having more than just access problems in doing their jobs. He and other journalists were holed up in the City Inn Palace Hotel after having been fired upon by Israeli troops as they ventured toward Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat's compound in armored vehicles a week earlier.

They're not alone. The International Federation of Journalists has reported that four journalists have been killed and others have been subjected to more than 50 incidents of violence and intimidation since the latest Palestinian uprising began in September.

More than 20 journalists have come under fire since the Israeli offensive began March 29, the Paris-based watchdog group Reporters Without Borders reported. The Los Angeles Times reported that, in most cases, the shots were meant as warnings, but that five journalists had been wounded, including one American, Anthony Shadid of the Boston Globe.

"The Israelis have declared this a closed military zone ... and they're licensed, as far as they're concerned, to shoot to kill," said Hondros, who also has seen duty in Afghanistan, Kosovo, the former Yugoslavia, Albania and Angola, and whose work regularly appears in Time, Newsweek and U.S. News & World Report.

"If you drive around the streets, it's an invitation to get shot at. Even if you're trying to take [photographs from inside the hotel] of tanks below, you have people firing at you. One photographer had a bullet come through the glass and right past his head," he said.

Last week, the Society of Professional Journalists asked the Israeli government to stop the "intimidation and injury" of journalists trying to cover the conflict in the West Bank.

"Israeli actions demonstrate a growing, disturbing penchant among many governments to restrict, penalize, harass, threaten, injure and kill journalists during the course of conflict in order to silence an effort to get out the truth and give people throughout the world a firsthand look at crisis," the SPJ said.

Hondros, who has had digital camera disks taken away from him at gunpoint in Afghanistan, said, "You just can't let these things get in the way. It's the price of doing business nowadays. It's still very important we don't roll over and die. We need to fight the power a little."

"One thing remains the same," Esper said, "and that's the dedication of the combat correspondent, of the combat photographer to get the story, to get the photos, to keep the faith, despite government restrictions, in the people's right to know."