in 1928, and even helped lead it, but these Berkeley protests were different. He was disgusted with the sit-ins, strikes, and pickets lines of the Free Speech Movement, with the drugs and sex at the dance held by the Vietnam Day Committee in a campus gym to promote anti-war protests. He declared that "beatniks, radicals, and filthy speech advocates" were proof of a "morality and decency gap" at the center of the state's Democratic Party.

His message resonated with voters who saw the turbulence at Berkeley as a symbol of all that was ailing their country, an America facing threats from enemies abroad and rising taxes, racial strife, and generational conflict at home. Reagan defeated the incumbent, Edmund G. (Pat) Brown, in a landslide that left the state's DemocraticParty a wreck and instantly made the new Republican governor a national political figure.

Hoover welcomed Reagan's victory. For years, he had been frustrated by what classified FBI reports called "subversive" activities at the University of California's flagship campus. Berkeley had been the kind of institution that exemplified the best of American values: Here was a public university that offered a tuition-free education rivaling those offered by Harvard, Princeton, or Yale; employed a constellation of Nobel laureates; and held millions of dollars in government research contracts.

But even as the university was helping the nation win World War II by overseeing the development of the atomic bomb, Hoover's agents were investigating Berkeley students and professors suspected of spying for the Soviet Union. In the cold-war atmosphere of the late 40s