THE ADMINISTRATION: Hot Potato

For weeks, the blister-conscious Administration let the case of John Carter Vincent hiss and steam on the back of the stove. Dean Acheson wanted to promote him from his job as U.S. Minister to Switzerland, make him Ambassador to Costa Rica. But an ambassador must be confirmed by the Senate, and the White House did not relish the prospect of another airing of Vincent's record. Items: during his years (1945-4?) as director of the State Department's Office of Far Eastern Affairs, he 1) assiduously promoted an anti-Chiang policy that played right into Mao's hands; 2) rewrote, with Acheson's approval, the original War Department directive for the ill-starred Marshall mission, changed it into the policy that sped the Communist victory in China.

By last week, the Vincent case had already grown so hot that the White House was reluctant just to leave him in Switzerland, a major listening-post for the meeting of East & West. Finally, the State Department hit on a slick way out. It appointed Vincent diplomatic agent and U.S. consul general at Tangier, the international territory in Morocco. Though the assignment was a comedown for a veteran of 25 years in the foreign service, Tangier is one of the few important posts where the chief of mission does not require Senate confirmation.

To replace Vincent in Bern, the President last week nominated bluff Richard C. Patterson Jr., once Ambassador to Yugoslavia, more recently to Guatemala.