Napalm Girl Update: AP’s Backpedal - from 100% Nick Ut to ‘Possible,’ and Leica takes the fall. It was an Asahi Pentax!

GRUMPY OLD VIETNAM HAND.

And so who was there - and photographed too - holding an Asahi Pentax camera as the Napalm Girl ran past at Trang Bang northwest of Saigon on 8 June 1972? That was Nguyen Thanh Nghe, the man who’s claimed he was the real photographer in the controversial documentary ‘The Stringer.’ Now earlier this week, the Associated Press (AP) published an even-longer investigation (97 pages!) than just before its premiere at the Sundance Film Festival in January and is no longer quite so sure its photographer Nick Ut took the famous photo. “AP has concluded that it is possible Nick Ut took the photo.” (Italics mine.) But then boldly announces: “At the same time, no proof has been found that Nguyen [Thanh Nghe] took the picture.” (Again, my italics.)

So what’s going on here anyway? I am still back here in Vietnam and got this report travelling around - up in the cool mountains of Da Lat, in fact - and have purposefully waited for a few days to absorb and re-read AP’s updated and voluminous report, the first 20 pages of which are the most important and revealing.

My reaction on first early morning reading of the report was disquiet at another personal attack. But as the day wore on, that feeling turned to the joy of vindication upon the realisation the AP had finally confirmed what I’d long suspected that an Asahi Pentax, and not a Leica, had shot the famous Napalm Girl image. A crucial missing detail that challenged long-held assumptions about the photo’s authorship.

The long-standing assumption that Nick Ut captured the Napalm Girl photo with a Leica has been deeply intertwined with his legacy. Leica itself has reinforced that connection, inducting him into its Hall of Fame in 2012, providing him with high-end Leica cameras, and even creating a special edition Leica X2 bearing his name. They have also sponsored his photo exhibitions.

Yet the AP’s investigation revealing that the iconic image was, in fact, shot with an Asahi Pentax now complicates the neat narrative that has formed around Ut and his Leica. What does Leica have to say, I wonder?

Nick Ut was right behind me in the stands overlooking the grand parade celebrating the 50th Anniversary of the Fall/Liberation of Saigon on 30 April 1975, both of invitees for the Vietnam’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs ‘press week’ with this the highlight. Thankfully, we got along very well - and just no mention of that Elephant in the Room.

And I must say that I found AP’s timing of its release, exactly one week after Vietnam celebrated the 50th Anniversary of the Fall/Liberation of Saigon (and South Vietnam) on 30 April 1975, quite fascinating. (Irony again, anyone?!) Along with his friends and supporters, Nick Ut was also attending the Ministry of Foreign Affairs ‘press week’ and, quite thankfully for everyone, we two old AP colleagues got along surprisingly well with no mention of that elephant in the room. We were even pictured and video’d together. Officially, Nick Ut is still highly-regarded in Vietnam. And at least, I’d finally got that very awkward reunion out of the way.

For me, AP’s report - if I may use the old cliché - is all about what’s between the lines. And I know what’s there, and much more. I can see the dots - some of them, anyway - and how they remain unconnected in a report that reads like a puzzle with deliberately scattered pieces. An almost intentional ambiguity.

And finally how the information I did provide to AP - negatively referenced as ‘declined to be interviewed’ and even that I’d cc’d my lawyer & the doco’s producers (oh, heavens, what?!) - was minimised with leads to important back-up witnesses overlooked, our own proof. So politely and thankfully received by AP back in February, did they even read my long & detailed replies, even an addendum of contacts for them to chase up?

As an old journo, I know exactly what ‘doing a job on someone’ in a journalistic sense looks like. Both Nghe and I are portrayed almost entirely in a negative, denigrating manner. The language and devices used are glaringly obvious.

Despite questions about the photo’s authorship floating around since the late 1990s, AP repeatedly asserts that no one has ‘formally complained’ or ‘seriously challenged’ the credit. And then there’s Peter Arnett’s particularly egregious claim - that I waited until Horst Faas died in 2012 to make my allegation.

That’s simply false. Hoping for some sympathy and understanding, I had actually told Arnett in 2009 - three years earlier - and I have the emails to prove it.

And then there’s AP’s constant assumptions and selective framing. My supposed anger that I was ‘over-ruled’ on the choice of the napalm girl photo, its portrayal as a ‘disagreement.’

No, a very collegiate decision made and we just got on with the job and radiophoto sent out, but all to downplay that simple truth that my boss Horst Faas had ordered me to instead put Nick Ut’s name on the photo’s caption instead of the stringer (or freelancer) and which I did fearing for my job and family security - and everlasting guilt & regret too. (See my Weekend Australian Magazine piece of 8 February 2025 on why I finally decided to go public on this.)

Oh, and there’s Carl Robinson again holding a bottle and holding up a glass of champagne when Nick Ut won the Pulitzer Prize in early ‘73. See?! What did they know what I was thinking that day behind those dark glasses, eh? Mind-reading, anyone? Everything is twisted to fit a narrative rather than reflect reality. And there’s lots more too but I won’t bore you, all refutable and explainable.

Well, AP’s almost all negative anyway - and there’s this little surprise: “Robinson’s friends say he is earnest, honest and troubled by the events in the office. Former colleagues have fond memories of working with him.”

And finally great news for me, “AP could find no record for why he was dismissed” after barely a year in Sydney back in 1978 and a fact used previously against me. (Yup, I never did get an explanation for why I was fired in far-way Australia after all those years with AP in Vietnam.) But even that revelation quickly switches right back into the negative.

Again as an old journo, it’s always fascinating to see how a story gets reported, especially when you’ve read, heard or seen the original. It’s a great way to make up your own mind and spot the bias, what’s so often left in or out, even the context. And the headline’s another tell, like AP's own report, “Associated Press finds ‘no definitive evidence’ to change credit for famous Vietnam War photo.” Or the AFP's more balanced “AP to continue crediting 'Napalm Girl' photo to Nick Ut after probe.”

But both stories downplay what I’ve made the headline to this Substack and what I regard as the report’s most crucial findings - and which are also the most favourable to Nghe, myself and the documentary makers. His daughter Jannie says he cried when he heard AP say it was an Asahi Pentax the other day.

The uncropped image - now confirmed shot on an Asahi Pentax - with Vietnamese freelance photographer Hoang Van Danh (Doanh) changing the film in his camera and another important, but uninterviewed, witness to the day’s events.

In the AP report’s own words:

Importantly, AP’s investigation has turned up myriad new materials and conclusions, such as:

• It is unlikely the famous photo was taken by a Leica M2

• It is likely the famous photo was taken using a Pentax camera

• A distant, blurry figure seen in key footage that day appears to show Nick Ut

This leaves significant questions:

• If the camera used was a Pentax, could Nick Ut have taken the photo?

• What cameras was Ut carrying? He has said in multiple interviews that he carried two Leica and two Nikon cameras.

• Why have no other frames from the same roll of film as the famous photograph been uncovered?

• If Nick Ut is the distant figure, how could he have taken the famous image, and then appeared in a different location?

• Why has AP found no match between the famous image and any other negative in its archive?

“There are possible answers to all these questions,” the report continues, as over the next 60-plus pages, the AP seeks to find answers and justify its decision to continue its attribution of the famous Napalm Girl photo to Nick Ut, including its own standards that “a challenged credit would be removed only if definitive evidence … showed that the person who claimed to have taken the photo did not.”

“All available evidence analysed by AP does not clear that bar,” the report says.

AP’s report does everything to discredit and dismiss Nguyen Thanh Nghe as the real photographer, reinforcing the existing credit to Nick Ut. The selective framing, assumptions, and omissions create a convoluted narrative - one worth reading closely.

But the most important revelation remains: the famous image was shot with an Asahi Pentax, not a Leica. And Nghe had one that day.

Nghe - properly referenced in Vietnamese - gets reduced to a mere bit player in the unfolding drama at Trang Bang on June 8, 1972. AP boldly asserts, ‘Other than Nguyen Thanh Nghe, none questioned Ut’s authorship of the photo.’

But what about his brother-in-law, Tran Van Thanh? Thanh, NBC’s soundman, cited later in the report, is photographed standing right next to Nghe, who is pictured holding his Asahi Pentax just moments after Kim Phuc ran past the two western film crews.

(And yet another overlooked witness: freelancer Hoang Van Danh, also Doanh, self-identified changing his film on the right of the uncropped Napalm Girl image aabove who would’ve known and seen Nick Ut much further down the road, see below.)

NBC soundman Thanh’s presence is more than incidental. He is a direct witness, someone who endured decades of family anguish and division over that very image in their post-war settlement in America. Yet AP’s framing conveniently overlooks his testimony, failing to acknowledge how his account could support Nghe’s claim and instead focusing on whether he or Nghe himself delivered his film to AP.

What could have been established in a simple Q&A with Nghe - especially after AP formally viewed the documentary in February - was exactly why he was there that day. His background as a US Army-trained cinematographer with the South Vietnamese Army (ARVN), his photography hobby using an Asahi Pentax, and the circumstances that placed him at Trang Bang.

NBC needed a driver, and Nghe knew how to drive - a skill not common in South Vietnam at the time. That’s why he was there. AP’s office was right next door, and Nick Ut hitched a ride with the NBC crew led by correspondent Arthur Lord, cameraman Le Phuc Dinh, and soundman Tran Van Thanh.

Yet despite written testimony placing Lord ‘shoulder-to-shoulder with Nick Ut,’ the correspondent is conspicuously absent from the vast trove of photos taken that day. Another glaring inconsistency in AP’s report.

The AP report continues, including a Reconstruction section that examines the documentary’s controversial claim: ‘a distant, blurry figure seen in key footage that day appears to show Nick Ut’ - some 60 meters away. AP sought an explanation from Ut in a five-hour interview before his return to Vietnam in April.

The Asahi Pentax revelation required another explanation. Then came a spirited attack on the filmmakers and their forensic analysis - something I won’t comment on due to legal constraints.

The report’s conclusion makes quite a lively climax and - for a true insider like myself in this entire story - makes quite a fascinating read. “AP pursued this investigation with an open mind,” it begins. “When it makes errors, AP standards require swift corrections. In this case, AP is simply interested in ensuring an accurate record of an event that took place more than half a century ago.”

But how open, really? AP claims to have pursued this investigation with an open mind, yet key witnesses - those closest to Nghe and myself - were never contacted. No effort was made to ask our families about the toll this controversy has taken, about the years spent living with two men deeply unsettled every time the Napalm Girl photo resurfaces. We haven’t made this up. We have no reason to do so.

I have repeatedly stated, including in the documentary, that this was never about personal gain - it was about conscience. About unloading a burden carried for decades as I near old age. My only goal was to find the real photographer, the man I only knew as Nghe, and say sorry. And I did that in a Can Tho hospital of 25 April 2023. The rest is extra.

This isn’t just about facts. It’s about integrity. It’s about historical accuracy. And it’s about the human cost of a story that has been told one way for far too long.

Does conscience and honesty count for anything these days? If AP’s report is any indication, the answer seems clear. Just read the consistently negative way it portrays Nghe and me - we are not to be believed. Simple as that.

AP is fighting for its reputation. But in doing so, what has it done to ours?

And then comes a string of three paragraphs dismissing Nghe, contending Nick might’ve used an Asahi Pentax after all, and explaining that distant figure followed by two very rhetorically framing one-sentence paragraphs to nudge readers towards AP’s narrative throughout its report:

In the movie, (Gary) Knight says for Ut to have taken the photo one would have to believe a series of incredibly unlikely events.

But what leaps in logic would one have to make to believe Ut had not taken the photo?

Followed by this rhetorically loaded paragraph which I could systematically refute point-by-point but won’t bother.

“You would have to believe that Ut, whose photos show him running up and down the road all day, stood in place about half a football field back while all the other journalists ran to the wounded and terrified children emerging from the town, the most dramatic moment of the day. Ut would have stayed far behind even (David) Burnett, who was stuck in place changing his film. You would have to believe that not one of the fiercely competitive journalists on the road recognized in the day or two after, when the photo became world news, that Ut had been so wildly behind the pack he could not have taken it. You would have to believe that Faas, who was not at Trang Bang, would know that when he miscredited the photo no one on the road would contradict him or even cast doubt on it. You would have to believe that Faas knew that Nguyen, whose brother-in-law worked for NBC in the office next door, would not hear of the miscredit and complain. And he would have to be so sure of that, that he would give him a print of the famous photo, which he could have used as proof that he had taken it. You’d have to believe that others in the office, including Ishizaki, the respected colleague who processed the famous image and did not work for Faas, all kept the secret for decades, and that Faas knew in the moment he made his decision that they would keep the secret. And you’d have to believe not just that Faas thought all those things would happen, but that every one of them then did happen.”

And, a definite yes to this sentence, AP, as I explained earlier. Nghe was a film guy who used his Asahi Pentax as a photo hobby. “You would also have to believe that the only photo Nguyen (Nghe) ever sold to a Western news outlet was one of the most famous photos of the century.” (But he had previously sold his moving film to US television networks and definitely knew how that system worked.)

“It is possible that was the case,” AP hedges about the actual photo. “It is possible it was not.” That tells you everything you need to know.

And then comes AP’s final framing - a classic institutional defence mechanism - that it clearly hopes will put an end to the matter.

Well, let’s see about that then.

But meanwhile, here’s hoping the world will soon - and finally - see ‘The Stringer’ documentary and open up the conversation to the transparency this narrative truly deserves.