U.S. Will Stay in Vietnam Until POWs Are Released

President Nixon said last night that American forces will remain in South Vietnam until all U.S. prisoners have been released and the South Vietnamese "attain the capacity to defend themselves."

"We have cards, and we intend to play them to the hilt," Nixon declared in an interview with a six-man panel of the American Society of Newspaper Editors.

Nixon said that a residual force, which would include U.S. air power, will remain in South Vietnam until the North Vietnamese released every American prisoner.

Nixon reiterated that the ultimate goal of Vietnam policy was total U.S. withdrawal from Southeast Asia. However, he once again refused to set a specific withdrawal date, saying that this "would only serve the enemy."

President Nixon said that he often woke up at night wondering "what I can do the next day that will contribute most toward lasting peace."

Nixon maintained that his method of ending American involvement in South Vietnam would bring this peace, calling it "something we haven't had for a full generation but something we can have."

In the course of the interview, the President spoke of his recent intervention in the Calley case, and of criticism directed toward FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover.

Nixon told the panel that his intervention in the Calley case was consistent with American military justice and that it had calmed public fears by assuring a fair final review of Calley's murder conviction.

Nixon staunchly defended Hoover, saying that many of the charges against him were unfair and malicious. "I have been in police states and the idea that this is a police state is just pure nonsense," he said.

The interview was broadcast by CBS, NBC, and the Mutual Broadcasting Network. The White House had ruled out any live television broadcast of the interview.