During these last few months, in the furor surrounding the Calley trial, the Berrigan indictment and the exposure of F.B.I, documents stolen from its office in Media, Pennsylvania, many Americans have become aware, on a new dimension of intensity, of the way in which our public institutional life has become corrupted by governmental efforts to repress dissent. Much must be blamed on the Vietnamese war, to be sure. But public disgust over the war merely brought this corruption out in the open. Every revelation of the extent of the development of an internal police network to repress dissent has revealed that its roots go back not only to the early days of the Civil Rights movement but that it is a survivor of the McCarthy era of Red-baiting.