an opinion piece he wrote for The Washington Post in June 2022<\/a> \u2014 \u00dat offers this description:<\/p>\n\n\tWhen the bombs exploded, we didn\u2019t know whether anyone had been injured. All morning, the village had seemed empty. But many people were hiding inside the village temple.<\/p>\n
\n\tAs we came closer, we saw people fleeing the napalm. I was horrified when I saw a woman with her left leg badly burned. I can still see so vividly the old woman carrying a baby who died in front of my camera and another woman carrying a small child with his skin coming off.<\/p>\n
\n\tThen I heard a child screaming, \u201cNong qua! Nong qua!\u201d Too hot! Too hot! I looked through my Leica viewfinder to see a young girl who had pulled off her burning clothes and was running toward me. I started taking pictures of her.<\/p>\n
\n\tThen she yelled to her brother that she thought she was dying and wanted some water. I instantly put my cameras down so I could help her. I knew that was more important than taking more photos. I took my canteen for her to drink and poured water on her body to cool her off, but it created more pain for her. I didn\u2019t know that when people get burned so badly, you\u2019re not supposed to put water on them.<\/p>\n
\n\tOne problem with \u00dat\u2019s account is the camera. He has frequently told the story of using a spare Leica M2 to make this decisive frame. But the AP investigation found that the camera used to make the photograph was \u201cunlikely\u201d to have been a Leica, and especially not the camera \u00dat donated to the Science Museum in London, where it was displayed as the camera that took the famous photo. Different brands of cameras produce slightly different-sized negatives, and by examining the dimensions of the negative, AP determined that \u201cNapalm Girl\u201d was \u201clikely\u201d made with a Pentax. A Pentax and a Leica M2 bear little resemblance to each other and, for a professional photographer, would be difficult to confuse.<\/p>\n
\n\t\u00dat\u2019s attorney tells Rolling Stone that \u00dat inherited two Pentax cameras from his brother, a photographer who had been killed on assignment for AP, and \u201ccarried [one of them] every day as a talisman.\u201d He continues, \u201cNick \u00dat has explained that the day the photo was taken, Horst Faas complimented him and told him it was a great Leica picture. At the time, Nick was 21 years old and certainly listened to his boss and mentor. He knew Horst was a Leica proponent and accepted Horst\u2019s statement. Nick used multiple cameras that day and turned in eight rolls. He could not possibly know in the chaos of that day which roll came from which camera.\u201d<\/p>\n
\n\tHow Faas would have been able to differentiate a Leica negative from a Pentax negative with his naked eye is difficult to fathom; they are nearly indistinguishable but for a difference in size of fractions of millimeters.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\t\t\t\t\t\t![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.rollingstone.com\/wp-content\/themes\/vip\/pmc-rollingstone-2022\/assets\/public\/lazyload-fallback.gif\")
<\/p>\n
\t\t\t\t\t\u00dat rushing to the aid of a badly burned Kim Ph\u00fac. She calls him \u201cmy hero \u2026\u00a0 for saving my life.\u201d<\/p>\n
\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tBettmann Archive\/Getty Images<\/p>\n
\n\tAnother wrinkle in \u00dat\u2019s account is the timeline. In the past, he\u2019s claimed he was photographing the elder woman and, through his viewfinder, saw Kim Ph\u00fac running down the road. Yet an examination of photographs and footage from the day indicates that Kim Ph\u00fac came out of the village before the elder woman, and she fled very soon after the napalm hit. As Kim Ph\u00fac runs toward the camera, the smoke from the burning fuel is still so black it is not even possible to see the Cao \u0110\u00e0i temple. By the time the elder woman came down the road carrying the baby, the wind \u2014 which historical weather reports indicate was at its strongest right after the bombing \u2014 had dispersed most of the smoke, and the temple had become visible. In ITN\u2019s film footage, we see that Kim Ph\u00fac and the children have run past the camera significantly before the elder woman comes into view. \u00dat\u2019s photographs of the elder woman appear to have been made after Kim Ph\u00fac ran down the road, not before.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\n\t\u00dat\u2019s attorney tells Rolling Stone, \u201cSeeing all the footage and other images that have now been shown to Nick, he is convinced he was confused by the chaotic events that unfolded that day as to the sequence.\u201d Being confused in combat is understandable; it happens to many of us, and it might suggest the possibility that this is not the only important detail about which \u00dat could be confused.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\n\tIn the films and photographs made that day, \u00dat is visible wearing his distinctive helmet with a tab sticking out of it, a flak jacket with \u201cAP\u201d written on the back, short sleeves, his camera bag, poncho, and watch. Burnett has often noted how his friend \u00dat took the photo while he, Burnett, missed it because he was rewinding his film. He\u2019s said he recalls seeing \u00dat run up the road with Newsweek stringer Alex Shimkin. Burnett has repeatedly said he did not see who took the photograph, but he is convinced \u00dat did, saying that, to his recollection, \u00dat was the only person in the right position to have gotten the shot. Butterfield, who also maintains \u00dat took the photograph, told us in August 2024, \u201cKim Ph\u00fac emerged from the smoke crying and on fire. It was very powerful. Not sure who else was there. I wasn\u2019t paying attention to [\u00dat], I didn\u2019t know him at that time. I was moving all the time, because the scene was moving, and we didn\u2019t know what was going to happen next.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
\n\tWhen pressed, neither Burnett nor Butterfield is able to say they actually witnessed \u00dat take the photograph, and no one else has come forward to say definitively that they saw him take the photo. Burnett has referred to a lone photographer we can see beyond the concertina wire earlier in the sequence as \u00dat, which might make it possible for \u00dat to have been in the right place at the right time. But that is not \u00dat; we believe it\u2019s a military photographer, later identified by the AP as Hu\u1ef3nh C\u00f4ng Ph\u00fac. (Both AP and World Press, in their own investigations, concluded based on available footage that Hu\u1ef3nh C\u00f4ng Ph\u00fac could plausibly have been in the right area to take the \u201cNapalm Girl\u201d photograph, though no one has to this point come forward claiming he did. Hu\u1ef3nh C\u00f4ng Ph\u00fac died in 2009.) The military photographer is carrying a bag and wearing camouflage, not the U.S. military olive-green that \u00dat was wearing; he wasn\u2019t wearing a flak jacket, as \u00dat was, and he bears no resemblance to the person \u00dat identified as himself that day years later on his own Instagram feed. And besides, the picture of that lone photographer beyond the wire is credited to \u00dat in the AP archive, in which case \u00dat couldn\u2019t be in the photograph. We know the TV crews and photographer who made the images of Kim Ph\u00fac all moved beyond the concertina wire. In one intriguing photo, we see a photographer in a white shirt and black vest photographing the children as they run past the TV crews, putting him in an ideal place to have taken the photograph moments before.<\/p>\n
\n\tHOW DO YOU FIND SOMEONE maybe called Ngh\u1ec7 with nothing but a 50-year-old photo of a small figure whose face is partly hidden by a camera? We weren\u2019t even sure of the name, which was given to Carl Robinson\u2019s wife by a Vietnamese AP photographer who claimed it belonged to the person who had really taken the photo.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\n\tRobinson, his wife Kim-Dung, Terri Lichstein, and the Vietnamese reporter we hired to work with us, L\u00ea V\u00e2n, came up with an idea to hire a prominent local blogger who had an extensive network through his Facebook page, both in Vietnam and in the diaspora, to find Ngh\u1ec7. In March 2023, we agreed on a fee of $1,000, and the blogger, Nguy\u1ec5n Ng\u1ecdc Vinh, posted the photo along with a message asking anyone who thought they might know the man in the white shirt, dark trousers, and dark vest \u2014 who might be called Ngh\u1ec7 \u2014 to please contact him.<\/p>\n
\n\tThree days later, a retired film technician from Los Angeles, Chinh Dao, responded. The man in the photo was his friend Nguy\u1ec5n Th\u00e0nh Ngh\u1ec7. Chinh and his brother Thang had met Ngh\u1ec7 in the late Eighties and worked with him at FotoKem in L.A., printing films for Hollywood studios, where Ngh\u1ec7 spent much of his postwar life building a career to support his family in California. Chinh later told us, \u201cI hope, I hope that story is going to come out soon. My friend Mr. Ngh\u1ec7 has been waiting for the whole of his life.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
\n\tChinh sent a message to his brother in Los Angeles, who called Ngh\u1ec7 right away. \u201cReally, some people are looking for me?\u201d Ngh\u1ec7 said, according to Thang. Then, says L\u00ea V\u00e2n, Ngh\u1ec7, who was in the Mekong Delta on vacation, called the blogger: \u201cI am the one you are looking for.\u201d\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
\n\tNgh\u1ec7 was by then 85 years old. In an interview the following day, L\u00ea V\u00e2n found him lucid but frail. The story she heard from him seemed to corroborate and add to Robinson\u2019s. When asked which photos he took on June 8, 1972, he said, \u201cThe one with the naked little girl whose clothes were burned.\u201d L\u00ea V\u00e2n asked him, \u201cThe one that won the Pulitzer later on?\u201d \u201cYes,\u201d he replied. When she returned home to Ho Chi Minh City, L\u00ea V\u00e2n says, she burst into tears and then called us.<\/p>\n
\n\tWe intensified our effort to reconstruct the narrative of June 8, 1972. Then, inevitably, things started to go sideways. The blogger we had hired understood the impact of what we had found and threatened to publish the story of Ngh\u1ec7 in Vietnamese on Facebook unless we gave him $10,000. We didn\u2019t, and he published what he had. While the foreign press didn\u2019t notice, Nick \u00dat did, and promptly posted a photo of himself in Tr\u1ea3ng B\u00e0ng on his Instagram page. \u00dat then went on Bolsa TV \u2014 a U.S.-based Vietnamese-language media organization \u2014 and defended himself. Separately, he also proclaimed that AP would sue anyone who challenged his authorship. Soon after, the network of veteran Vietnam correspondents we had been talking to closed ranks. Portentously, it began to get ugly as friends and colleagues of Faas attacked Robinson\u2019s credibility.<\/p>\n
\n\tIn his appearance on Bolsa TV, \u00dat referred to Ngh\u1ec7 as a driver for NBC, but he was neither a hired driver nor had a job for NBC. Ngh\u1ec7 was freelancing on spec and had NBC accreditation. Like many photographers in wars before and since, he needed accreditation to access combat zones if he was working as a freelancer; at the time, news bureaus would often give them out in exchange for a first look at your material. Ngh\u1ec7 says he drove to Tr\u1ea3ng B\u00e0ng that day and took \u00dat as a back-seat passenger, then drove directly back to Saigon after the work was over, also with \u00dat in the back seat. This may explain why \u00dat refers to him as a driver.<\/p>\n
\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n
\t\t\t\t\tNguy\u1ec5n Th\u00e0nh Ngh\u1ec7 recounts the scene on the road to Tr\u1ea3ng B\u00e0ng. He says the idea that his credit was removed from \u201cNapalm Girl\u201d makes him \u201csad.\u201d<\/p>\n
\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tL\u00ea V\u00e2n\u00a0<\/p>\n
\n\tAs our reporting soon bore out, Ngh\u1ec7 was far more than a driver. Piecing together information from him, his children, and Department of Defense records, we formed a picture of his life and his dedication to the craft of making pictures.<\/p>\n
\n\tBorn to his father\u2019s mistress, Ngh\u1ec7 was raised by a surrogate family that received money from his father. Around age 18, he left home to study cinematography at college, and around the late 1950s, he started work as a cameraman and photographer for the South Vietnamese army. He received signals training from the U.S. military in New Jersey in 1961 and then returned to Vietnam. Later in the war, because of that training, he was seconded, or essentially loaned, by the South Vietnamese army to the CIA PsyOps program transmitting broadcasts to North Vietnamese forces for \u201cMother Vietnam,\u201d a propaganda unit of the CIA.<\/p>\n
\n\tBy 1970, Ngh\u1ec7 had become a first sergeant and an experienced war photographer. While his civilian colleagues donned tailor-made combat fatigues, he would sometimes slip out of the office in street clothes and photograph the war to earn extra money to support his three children by selling photos to local newspapers. He says he carried a Pentax Spotmatic \u2014 the type of camera AP\u2019s extensive investigation suggests was used to take the photo \u2014 loaded with black-and-white Kodak Tri-X film, and used a 50mm lens. He also used a Bolex film camera, he told us, so he could double up and sell film to the TV networks.<\/p>\n
\n\tJune 8, 1972, was the first and last time Ngh\u1ec7 says he ever sold photos to AP.<\/p>\n
\n\tIt was Ngh\u1ec7\u2019s brother-in-law, the NBC soundman Tr\u1ea7n V\u0103n Th\u00e2n, who recounts going with Ngh\u1ec7 to sell the photos to AP. Th\u00e2n was one of the six men in the first group of newsmen closest to the Cao \u0110\u00e0i temple who were filming Kim Ph\u00fac and the children running toward them.<\/p>\n
\n\tTh\u00e2n was one of the last people we were able to track down and interview. He summarized the material from our two interviews in November 2023 and May 2024 in a letter he sent me shortly thereafter, describing the events on the road. \u201cWhile we were filming,\u201d he wrote, \u201cNguy\u1ec5n Th\u00e0nh Ngh\u1ec7 stood on my left side and took a photo of the burned girl. After finishing, I said to Nguy\u1ec5n Th\u00e0nh Ngh\u1ec7, \u2018Today, there were no reporters from the news agencies UPI and AP here. Give me the film; I\u2019ll help sell it to AP.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cYou must be aware that the AP with all its resources . . . will do everything possible to discredit you and your assertions.\u201d<\/p>\n
AP reporter Peter Arnett, to photo editor
Carl Robinson in a public chat forum
for Vietnam War photographers<\/p>\n
\n\tTh\u00e2n explained to us that \u201cthe office of NBC News and the news agency AP [were] just a wall apart, so we [were] very familiar with each other.\u201d Th\u00e2n says he went with Ngh\u1ec7 to sell his photos to AP and feels certain about the role of Horst Faas in what followed: \u201cHe selected the photo of the burned child and returned all the other film rolls to me, giving me 20 dollars for the photo he chose. Along with it, there was one [print] picture of the burned child. I handed everything to Ngh\u1ec7.\u201d<\/p>\n
\n\tTh\u00e2n describes the \u201csurprise, shock, and fury\u201d he and Vietnamese colleagues felt when, a few months later, the photo of the burned child won an international award for \u00dat. Th\u00e2n says he dared not utter a word about the deceit at the time. The directors of AP and NBC News were, he explains, very close. \u201cI had to stay silent; otherwise, I could lose my job and my source of income,\u201d he told us, his voice at once plaintive and matter-of-fact. \u201cHow would I support my family?\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
\n\tOne of several reasons Arnett, Burnett, Butterfield, and others are convinced \u00dat took the photograph could be that, by their own accounts, Faas told them so. None of them have ever claimed they definitively saw who pressed the shutter. In books and interviews, they have shared how they heard Faas congratulate \u00dat in the AP office. Burnett and Arnett may have witnessed that, but if Faas\u2019 own telling of the story is to be believed, they would have arrived too late to see the film being delivered to the AP bureau and being processed, and neither of them claim to have seen the caption being typed. They just have Faas\u2019 word.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\n\tCarl Robinson is not close with \u00dat\u2019s most vocal supporters, and is something of an outsider among expat reporters who covered the war, but that doesn\u2019t disqualify him as a credible witness. Nor does his self-acknowledged drug use, which many \u00dat supporters have cited in an effort to discredit him. (If his recreational drug use in the early Seventies in Vietnam makes him unreliable, where does that leave the rest of the press corps?) What is certain is that the truth cannot be established solely by what took place in the AP Bureau; it must come, ultimately, from the road to Tr\u1ea3ng B\u00e0ng.<\/p>\n
\n\tFortunately, that road is littered with evidence in the form of photographs and film.<\/p>\n
\n\tAcknowledging the distance in time between what happened in a small village in Vietnam in 1972 and now, and understanding that there are so many conflicting accounts by \u00dat, Faas, Ngh\u1ec7, Th\u00e2n, and other eyewitnesses, our filmmaking team engaged the French NGO Index Investigation, one of the world\u2019s leading independent forensic-investigation companies, to examine all of the data and evidence we had gathered. Relying on a careful review of the available documentation \u2014 including photographs taken that day, aerial images, U.S. satellite imagery of Tr\u1ea3ng B\u00e0ng from 1972, video recordings, and information about the height, clothing, and equipment of journalists on the scene \u2014 the firm created a 3D model in which all of the relevant players were positioned along the axis of the Tr\u1ea3ng B\u00e0ng road. Their movements were reconstructed in chronological order.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\n\tThe Index report referred to a \u201cframe-matching\u201d technique that allowed precise positioning of various people present on the road that day at different times. It used still images and film that show Ngh\u1ec7 in his white shirt and dark vest, the film crews with their cameras and sound equipment, the tall ITN reporter Christopher Wain, \u00dat wearing his distinct helmet with the tag, his AP flak jacket, short sleeves, a bulging camera bag on his left hip, poncho, and watch, and reconstructed the scene. Index initially concluded that just seconds after the picture was taken, \u00dat was located roughly 200 feet away from that spot; following the AP report, which introduced new information, Index revised its estimate of the distance to roughly 75 meters or 250 feet.<\/p>\n
\n\tFrancesco Sebregondi of Index says, \u201cNick \u00dat\u2019s presence at that specific moment in the ITN news video makes it highly implausible that he could have taken the \u2018Napalm Girl\u2019 photograph. Indeed, in order to shoot \u2018Napalm Girl,\u2019 and appear in that frame of the ITN footage walking toward the scene he would have had to cover a distance of approximately 75 meters in a matter of seconds, and do so outside of the ITN camera\u2019s frame.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\n\t\u201cThis seems very unlikely,\u201d Sebregondi continues, \u201cand editorially, doesn\u2019t make any sense that he would want to move away from the action. We can conclude that it is highly unlikely that Nick \u00dat took the \u2018Napalm Girl\u2019 photograph.\u201d \u00dat\u2019s attorney dismisses the Index findings as \u201cjunk science,\u201d citing the AP\u2019s analysis, which posits that the distance \u00dat would have covered was less than 75 meters. (AP\u2019s investigation disputes some elements of Index\u2019s report, but the core findings were supported by World Press Photo\u2019s investigation.)\u00a0<\/p>\n
\t\tArchival photos and 3D forensic reconstructions by Index Investigation place \u00dat\u2019s account in question\t<\/p>\n
\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n
\t\t\t\t\t1. SECONDS AFTER
This photo shows the children just moments after they\u2019ve run past the spot where \u201cNapalm Girl\u201d was taken.<\/p>\n
\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tBettmann Archive\/Getty Images<\/p>\n
\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n
\t\t\t\t\t2. DOWNES\u2019 VIEW
Cameraman Alan Downes\u2019 perspective of this same moment shows Nick \u00dat in the distance.<\/p>\n
\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tINDEX Investigation\/\u201cThe Stringer\u201d<\/p>\n
\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n
\t\t\t\t\t3. \u00daT APPROACHES
Index\u2019s graphics depict \u00dat moving toward the scene as Kim Ph\u00fac stops to receive aid from some men on the road. \u00dat faces the spot far up the road, behind the group of figures, where \u201cNapalm\u201d was snapped.<\/p>\n
\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tINDEX Investigation\/\u201cThe Stringer\u201d<\/p>\n
\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n
\t\t\t\t\t4. CAPTURED BY \u00daT
Per Index\u2019s investigation, \u00dat would have had to cover roughly 250 feet in seconds to be in position to take this photo.<\/p>\n
\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tNick \u00dat\/AP<\/p>\n
\n\tCREDIBLE JOURNALISM RELIES on credible authors, credible editors, and credible news organizations. If, as our reporting and the Index forensics suggest, Nick \u00dat didn\u2019t take the photograph, why wouldn\u2019t he have said anything? \u00dat wouldn\u2019t talk to the filmmaking team, so we haven\u2019t been able to ask him. But one theory concerns the power and authority of Horst Faas. If Carl Robinson, an established photo editor and a fellow American, didn\u2019t feel confident enough to challenge Faas, why would the young Vietnamese photographer \u00dat, the most junior person in the office? Robinson maintains he changed the byline exclusively at Faas\u2019 bidding, suggesting that \u00dat had no agency and was never consulted on the matter.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\n\tHow could AP bosses in New York have allowed such an egregious offense to happen? The agency proudly calls itself \u201cthe most trusted source of fast, accurate, unbiased news.\u201d AP HQ would not have known at the time who took the photo, and would have trusted their people in the field, just as other news organizations would. According to a post Peter Arnett wrote in November 2015 on Vietnam Old Hacks, modern-day senior AP editors had by then heard the rumors about this photo and dismissed them. (Arnett did not reply to the filmmakers\u2019 request for an interview, and AP says that \u201cthere has been no serious challenge to this photo\u2019s authorship until now.\u201d)\u00a0<\/p>\n
\n\tAnd how could Faas have knowingly perpetrated such deception? This is the question that, in my mind, deserves the greatest scrutiny. Faas writes that he was returning from lunch with Arnett when he first saw the photo. He has also written he was returning from an assignment. Memory can play tricks on all of us, but his recounting of the moment he first saw the photo doesn\u2019t change: \u201cWhen I got back to the office,\u201d he wrote, \u201cI glanced at films edited by others, not out of lack of trust, but because I thought a second look was often helpful. And there, without a doubt, the best photo was the one that had been discarded. Richard Pyle, then bureau chief, remembers me saying, \u2018I think we\u2019ve got the next Pulitzer!\u2019 \u2026 The film was processed by one of the editors. He did not select this photo because the little girl was naked, and the rule at AP was to not show a naked young girl, especially a pubescent girl. That editor, Carl Robinson, fearing that the photo was too risky and wouldn\u2019t get by the New York office, suggested other photos, all of which were good but just hovered around the subject.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m voicing a truth that has weighed heavily on my heart for over half a century.\u201d<\/p>\n
NBC sound engineer Tr\u1ea7n V\u0103n Th\u00e2n<\/p>\n
\n\tFaas\u2019 instinct for prize-winning photographs was acute. He took credit for training Malcolm Browne, who photographed the image of a self-immolating Buddhist monk in 1963, and, in 1968, he\u2019d picked out Eddie Adams\u2019 photograph of Brig. Gen. Nguy\u1ec5n Ng\u1ecdc Loan executing a Viet Cong prisoner. He won his first Pulitzer for photography from Vietnam in 1965 and his second from Bangladesh in 1972.<\/p>\n
\n\tFaas is the only person who knows why he allegedly told Robinson to change the name from Nguy\u1ec5n Th\u00e0nh Ngh\u1ec7 to Nick \u00dat. But Faas is dead. So what could have motivated him? We know the decision was made quickly. The film could not have been in the bureau for much more than three hours, and Faas was at lunch for some of that time, so perhaps he didn\u2019t think it through; perhaps it was impulsive. He would have had no loyalty to the stringer Ngh\u1ec7, having never met him, and Ngh\u1ec7 says he had never sold an image to AP before that day. Faas was, however, loyal to \u00dat, a young staffer he\u2019d mentored after \u00dat\u2019s brother, Hu\u1ef3nh Thanh M\u1ef9, was killed while working for AP a few years prior. Giving this image to \u00dat wouldn\u2019t make up for his brother\u2019s death, but is it possible Faas thought it would make \u00dat more secure at AP?\u00a0<\/p>\n
\n\tAs AP director of photography Hal Buell recounts in From Hell to Hollywood, a 2021 book about \u00dat, Faas had already sent a message to New York alerting them to the idea that this photo would be \u201can icon of all time.\u201d He knew it had the potential to win prizes, and prizes \u2014 like being wounded in action \u2014 burnish a journalist\u2019s reputation. There was another consideration: Faas, along with Arnett, Mort Rosenblum, and Jackson, had been flown into Saigon to support the bureau because \u2014 according to Robinson \u2014 AP was \u201closing the play\u201d to UPI. This was not a moment for an \u201cicon of all time\u201d to be transmitted with the byline of a stringer, underscoring that the AP staffer had missed the photo. That could signal to New York that the bureau had failed. Faas wasn\u2019t used to failure.<\/p>\n
\n\tTim Page once claimed to me that Faas had put his name on the work of Vietnamese photographers and taken credit for them as his own. Page was one of my mentors, and his word mattered to me. That wasn\u2019t the first time I had heard such a story from one photographer about another; the profession \u2014 like most others \u2014 is not free of jealousy. Nevertheless, while misattribution never happened to me, I had seen it happen to other young photographers, especially local photographers, as I was building my own career, and the allegation didn\u2019t seem implausible. At a meeting in June 2024, the widow of French photographer Michel Laurent had told me that her husband left AP for the French agency Gamma after Faas transmitted images from Bangladesh in 1972 co-bylined with his name and Laurent\u2019s. The photographs won the Pulitzer Prize, with both men\u2019s names on them. She claimed to me that the photos were 100 percent Laurent\u2019s. (Pulitzer tells Rolling Stone, \u201cThis is the first we are hearing\u201d of such an allegation.)<\/p>\n
\n\tHad Faas grown to rationalize occasionally changing the credit on photographs over nearly a decade of war? Would this explain how he might have taken something from a stringer he didn\u2019t know, given AP and the younger brother of his dead colleague the kudos, and enhanced his standing at the agency?<\/p>\n
\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n
\t\t\t\t\tKim Ph\u00fac and \u00dat (in 2022) have traveled the world for years, giving speeches and presentations. Both are steadfast he took the famous photo of her.<\/p>\n
\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tAFP\/Getty Images<\/p>\n
\n\tWE MAY NEVER KNOW why Nick \u00dat was seemingly given something he never asked for. But we know that countless Vietnamese photographers and reporters worked in anonymity during the Vietnam War, not out of choice but because their work was not credited at all, or was credited to others. To this day, dozens of gifted and courageous Vietnamese photographers, cameramen, and reporters remain unknown and unrecognized for the brilliant work they produced. They accepted that status quo because they had no choice. The politics of race and power, and the suffocating presence of the U.S. military, meant they were outsiders in their own country; they knew no one would listen, because they weren\u2019t equal. Some of them still don\u2019t feel safe talking now.<\/p>\n
\n\tAmong those outsiders is the last person we tracked down from the full-frame version of the photograph of Kim Ph\u00fac that the AP sent around the world. A Vietnamese photographer, he took photos of the children as they came across the field toward the road but then ran out of film. Repeatedly mistaken by Fox Butterfield and others for David Burnett in the famous photograph, he can be seen on the right, wearing a helmet and urgently rewinding his camera. His name is Ho\u00e0ng V\u0103n Danh, a freelancer who sold photos to UPI, AP\u2019s main competitor.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\n\tIn September 2024, after all our emails with Carl Robinson, after all our interviews, after meeting Ngh\u1ec7, after Index\u2019s forensics investigation, we met V\u0103n Danh. We showed him the photograph and asked him if he recalls Nick \u00dat standing next to him.<\/p>\n
\n\t\u201cNick? No, no, no,\u201d he answered emphatically. \u201cHe wasn\u2019t there, he was way back.\u201d<\/p>\n
\n\tOf those who had special knowledge of that day, Ngh\u1ec7\u2019s brother-in-law, the NBC sound engineer Tr\u1ea7n V\u0103n Th\u00e2n, who was standing next to Ngh\u1ec7 when the photograph was taken, was one of the most torn by the course of events. Th\u00e2n says he sold those images on Ngh\u1ec7\u2019s behalf to the AP, but his account had never entered the public record. (In fact, he had become estranged from Ngh\u1ec7 after the latter separated from Th\u00e2n\u2019s sister.) The letter he wrote to us in fall 2024 with details of the day ends as a lament:<\/p>\n
\n\tThough [I] remained silent, I couldn\u2019t forget that incident. Until today, more than half a century later, this incident still lingers bitterly in my heart. It\u2019s the truth, why hide it?<\/p>\n
\n\tI\u2019ve never spoken this truth out loud. My soul is still troubled, restless, because I feel like I am someone who concealed the truth!<\/p>\n
\n\tToday, I\u2019m telling this truth. I saw Nguy\u1ec5n Th\u00e0nh Ngh\u1ec7 taking the photo of the burned child with my own eyes.<\/p>\n
\n\tAfter decades, Tr\u1ea7n V\u0103n Th\u00e2n released his burden: \u201cI\u2019m writing these words, remembering and voicing a truth that has weighed heavily on my heart for over half a century.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
\n\tI asked Ngh\u1ec7 how he felt when he learned his name may have been deliberately removed from the photograph. He replied, \u201cI\u2019m just sad, not knowing what to do. My life is not equal to them, so I lost, there\u2019s nothing more I can do.\u201d <\/p>\n
Since The Stringer premiered at Sundance in January, there have been suggestions by some journalists that this story should not have been told; they posit that in this moment when journalism is being so savagely undermined by the very forces it seeks to hold to account, the last thing we need is to reveal our own failures. But journalism is essential to democracy, and it is in the interests of both the press and the public that trust in the Fourth Estate is repaired. That can\u2019t be done if we choose to ignore accusations of wrongdoing in our own profession. The passage of time may increase the anguish of self-examination, but the search for truth is always worth the cost.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"S aigon, Vietnam, June 8, 1972. Just before sunrise, a small group of newsmen slid into combat fatigues…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":52730,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[33],"tags":[88,40344,5090,40345,40346,40347,40348],"class_list":["post-52729","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-entertainment","tag-entertainment","tag-napalm-girl","tag-noads","tag-the-stringer","tag-the-terror-of-war","tag-truth-seekers","tag-vietnam-war"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/52729","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=52729"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/52729\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/52730"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=52729"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=52729"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=52729"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}