Daniel Berrigan his brother Phil and 7 others took 378 draft files from the draft board in Catonsville, MD. and in the parking lot of the draft board office they lit the draft files on fire using homemade Napalm to protest. the Vietnam War. They were known as the Catonsville Nine, a documentary called Hit & Stay, A History of Faith and Resistance. Fr. Daniel Berrigan wrote, of the Catonsville incident: “Our apologies, good friends, for the fracture of good order, the burning of paper instead of children…”

The whole of his statement is in The Trial of the Catonsville Nine. The Catonsville Nine were tried in federal court October 5–9, 1968. The lead defense attorney was counterculture legal icon William Kunstler. They were found guilty of destruction of U.S. property, destruction of Selective Service files, and interference with the Selective Service Act of 1967.

They were also sentenced to a total of 18 years’ jail time and a fine of $22,000. Several of the nine—Mary Moylan, Phil Berrigan, Dan Berrigan and George Mische—went “underground” when it came time to show up for prison—in other words, the FBI had to try to find them. Father Dan Berrigan caused considerable embarrassment to FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover by popping up and giving sermons and then fading back into the “underground”.-Wikipedia Fr. Berrigan was the first Catholic priest to make to the FBI’s most wanted list.. With his brother Phil, he inspired the Anti War and Anti Draft movement of the late 1960’s. Dan Berrigan said he’s “been arrested more times than he can remember but fewer times than he should have.”

The group included Molly Rush, co-founder of the Merton Center. As can be seen on the following YouTube video, Berrigan was a poet, pacifist, educator, social activist, playwright and lifelong resistor to what he called “American military imperialism.”