[1] Loan gained international attention when he summarily executed a handcuffed prisoner of war named Nguyễn Văn Lém on February 1, 1968, in Saigon, Vietnam during the Tet Offensive.

[2] South Vietnamese Vice President Nguyễn Cao Kỳ stated that Lém was "a very high ranking" political official, but had not been a member of the Viet Cong military.

He studied pharmacy and graduated near the top of his class at Huế University[4] before joining the Vietnamese National Army in 1951.

[7] In June 1965, when Ky became premier of South Vietnam, he promoted Loan to colonel and appointed him director of the Military Security Service.

[9] Having these positions enabled Loan to wield immense power, and he supervised the suppression of the early 1966 uprising of Ky's rival General Nguyễn Chánh Thi and dissident Buddhists.

[7] Loan was a staunch South Vietnamese nationalist, refusing to give Americans special treatment in his jurisdiction.

[8]: 100 Loan's men were also involved with the arrest of two VC operatives on 15 August 1967 who had been engaged with attempting peace negotiations with U.S. officials without the participation of the South Vietnamese in an initiative code-named Buttercup.

[10][11][8]: 101 Loan was an accomplished pilot—he commanded an airstrike on VC forces at Bù Đốp in 1967, soon before he was promoted to permanent brigadier general rank.

[12] Handcuffed, he was brought to Loan, who then summarily executed him on the street using his sidearm, a .38 Special Smith & Wesson Bodyguard Model 49 revolver.

"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.

Only one of Lt. Col. Tuan's children, Huan Nguyen, survived the attack and later became the first Vietnamese American promoted to rear admiral in the United States Navy.

Hastings also wrote that American historian Edwin Moise "is convinced that the entire story of Lém murdering the Tuân family is a post-war invention."

"[21] The execution was captured as a photo by Associated Press photographer Eddie Adams and on video by NBC News television cameraman Võ Sửu.

Again, his picture was published by the world press, this time as Australian war correspondent Pat Burgess carried him back to his lines.

[8]: 285–6 In 1975, during the fall of Saigon, Loan approached the US Embassy for evacuation, but was refused, and he and his family escaped aboard an RVNAF airplane and eventually reached the US.

[27] He then opened a restaurant named "Les Trois Continents" in the Washington, D.C. suburb of Burke, Virginia at Rolling Valley Mall.

[33] House of Representatives member Elizabeth Holtzman forwarded a list of Vietnamese officials who may have committed war crimes (including Loan) to Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS).

What the photograph didn't say was, "What would you do if you were the general at that time and place on that hot day, and you caught the so-called bad guy after he blew away one, two or three American soldiers?".