We will continue to speak out and act for peace and justice, knowing that our spirit of resistance cannot be jailed or broken.The mostly Catholic group included four priests and a Protestant minister, people working in education or legal and social services, veterans, and middle-aged parents.

Feeling torn between loyalty to his friends in the group and his strict law-and-order personal philosophy, Hardy approached the local FBI with his concerns.

Hardy agreed to become an informant, allegedly only after receiving assurances from his FBI handlers that none of the group would ever spend any time in jail for the raid against the draft board.

As he was a hands-on carpenter and handyman, he helped devise the plan whereby the group could break into the Federal office building within which the draft board was located.

The FBI agents held back and watched as the activists broke into the draft board office and commenced destroying and bagging thousands of draft-related documents.

After a significant amount of time passed during which thousands of documents had been handled, the hidden FBI agents were ordered to spring into action and arrest everyone involved.

Hardy maintained that from the start of his interaction with the FBI he sought and received assurances that none of his co-conspirators in the raid would see any jail time.

In fact, at least two of the Camden defendants (Keith Forsyth and Robert Williamson) had been involved in the Media burglary, though this was not revealed until they stepped forward in 2014.

[7] Father Michael Doyle, one of the 28 who was a Catholic parochial vicar in Camden at the time, remained a priest and community leader there until his death in 2022.

Analyzing the impact of the verdict in the Camden 28 trial in the context of contemporary events, Rick Perlstein wrote that the acquittal, on the basis of the plot being instigated by an agent provocateur, was "quietly devastating to the moral excuses of Watergate malefactors" because they had used the threat of political violence as a justification for their unlawful activities, and now appeared to be manufacturing it.