Finch's Try for Vindication

DESPITE Robert Finch's many problems in running the Department of Health, Education and Welfare, he requested six more months in that post when the President asked him to join the White House staff. In an interview with TIME Correspondent Simmons Fentress, Finch said: "I told him you have some good periods and bad periods in a department that big, and we had some things coming up. I told him I wanted to go out on the upbeat. He wouldn't accept it. He said he had some other moves he wanted to make, and he felt a strong need to do it then."

One move, it developed last week, was the firing of James Allen as Commissioner of Education--a decision made in the White House but ex- ecuted by Finch in his last days as HEW Secretary. Many HEW staffers were already restive over the department's inability to withstand conservative pressure from the White House; had Finch stayed on after Allen's dismissal, a further result of that pressure, his position in HEW would have been further undermined.

Finch was painfully aware of the internal criticism of his stewardship. Shortly before Nixon informed him of his transfer to the White House, Finch, while taking a doctor's-orders rest, was planning to cope with those objections. His aim, as one associate put it, was to be "more assertive, provide stronger leadership, get more policy attack." Thus his desire for another six months in which to vindicate himself.

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