Above is an article reporting part of the Tet offensive and the execution of a north Vietnamese gorilla soldier by a brigadier general of the south Vietnamese fighting force, Nguyen Ngoc Loan. The New York Times prints the article on February 2nd, 1968, two days after the start of the Tet offensive, shocking the nation with the brutal reality of the war American soldiers are fighting in. This is the kind of brutal fighting and war tactics that were being used in Vietnam that the Johnson administration was trying to hide from the public by saying the United States were winning, and not relaying any actual information other than success. Americans received the paper and realized that the war was redefining the way america acted in war, the public didn't want to associate themselves with armed forces that accepted public executions without a trial or any sort of prevention of death. this brought huge scrutiny on the validity of the message LBJ was sending to the public that the war was going well, as the Tet offensive itself was a successful attack by the North Vietnamese in the beginning days when this was released and scared the public.