The Vietnam draft resistance filled the federal prisons a third time: over 200,000 men were reported for draft offenses, some 3,250 imprisoned — David Harris among the most famous — while David Miller's 1965 card-burning tested the new mutilation law and Dr. Spock and the Boston Five were tried for conspiracy for supporting them. Muhammad Ali's refusal — "no Viet Cong ever called me n----r" — cost him his title and nearly his freedom until the Supreme Court reversed in 1971.

The Catholic left escalated from refusing the draft to destroying it: the Baltimore Four poured blood on the files in 1967, the Catonsville Nine burned 378 files with homemade napalm in 1968 — Daniel Berrigan's "apologies, good friends, for the fracture of good order" — and dozens of raids followed, until the Camden 28's 1973 acquittal, by a jury told the FBI had built the raid through its informer, effectively ended the prosecutions.