The "Daily Telegraph" journalist David Howell remarked to Andrew Alexander that Powell had "just withdrawn us from East of Suez, and received an enormous ovation because no-one understood what he was talking about". However, the Americans were worried by Powell's speech as they wanted British military commitments in South-East Asia as they were still fighting in Vietnam. A transcript of the speech was sent to Washington and the American embassy requested to talk to Heath about the "Powell doctrine". "The New York Times" said Powell's speech was "a potential declaration of independence from American policy". During the election campaign of 1966, Powell claimed that the British government had contingency plans to send at least a token British force to Vietnam and that, under Labour, the UK "has behaved perfectly clearly and perfectly recognisably as an American satellite".