<P> Protests against the Vietnam War took place in the late 1960s and early 1970s . The protests were part of a movement in opposition to the Vietnam War and took place mainly in the United States . (See also Students for a Democratic Society, Free Speech Movement, Jerry Rubin, Abbie Hoffman, Youth International Party, Chicago Seven .) </P> <P> The growing anti-war movement alarmed many in the U.S. government . On August 16, 1966 the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) began investigations of Americans who were suspected of aiding the NLF, with the intent to introduce legislation making these activities illegal . Anti-war demonstrators disrupted the meeting and 50 were arrested . </P> <P> In February 1967, The New York Review of Books published "The Responsibility of Intellectuals", an essay by Noam Chomsky, one of the leading intellectual opponents of the war . In the essay Chomsky argued that much responsibility for the war lay with liberal intellectuals and technical experts who were providing what he saw as pseudoscientific justification for the policies of the U.S. government . </P> <P> On February 1, 1968, Nguyễn Văn Lém, a Vietcong officer suspected of participating in murder of South Vietnamese government officials during the Tet Offensive, was summarily executed by General Nguyễn Ngọc Loan, the South Vietnamese National Police Chief . Loan shot Lém in the head on a public street in Saigon front of journalists . South Vietnamese reports provided as justification after the fact claimed that Lém was captured near the site of a ditch holding as many as thirty - four bound and shot bodies of police and their relatives, some of whom were the families of General Loan's deputy and close friend . The execution provided an iconic image that helped sway public opinion in the United States against the war . </P>

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