Revd Daniel Berrigan was 94 years old.
He died after a battle will illness at Murray-Weigel Hall, a Jesuit healthcare community in New York.
Dates: 1st November 1955 - 30th April 1975
Lasted: 19 years, 5 months and 1 day
Affected: Vietnam, Cambodia, and Laos
Winner: North Vietnam
Deaths: estimates from 533,000 to 1,450,000
Revd Berrigan and his younger brother, the Revd Philip Berrigan, acted as leaders of the radical anti-war movement in the 1960s.
The Berrigan brothers entered a draft board in Catonsville, Maryland, on May 17 1968, with eight other activists and removed records of young men about to be shipped off to Vietnam.
The group took the files outside and burned them in rubbish bins.
They were nicknamed The Catonsville Nine, and were convicted on federal charges accusing them of destroying US property and interfering with the Selective Service Act of 1967.
Each member was sentenced in 1968 to prison terms ranging from two to three-and-a-half years.
Back in 2009 he was asked by a national American Catholic magazine whether he had any regrets; Revd Berrigan replied: "I could have done sooner the things I did, like Catonsville."
He was also a writer and poet and described his courtroom experience in a special play in 1970, "The Trial of the Catonsville Nine," which was later made into a film.
He thanks Dorothy Day, founder of The Catholic Worker newspaper, with introducing him to the pacifist movement and influencing his thinking about war.
In 1963 he and his brother founded the Catholic Peace Fellowship, which helped organise protests against US involvement in Vietnam.
He later travelled to North Vietnam in 1968 and returned with three American prisoners of war who were being released as a goodwill gesture.
He said that while there, he witnessed some of the destruction and suffering caused by the war.
Philip Berrigan, his brother said: "I was blown away by the courage and effrontery, really, of my brother," speaking in a 2006 interview on the Democracy Now radio programme.
Philip Berrigan turned himself in to authorities in April 1969 at a Manhattan church.
The FBI arrested Daniel Berrigan four months later, he said in an interview that he became a fugitive to draw more attention to the anti-war movement.
Both brothers were sent to prison; Daniel Berrigan was released in 1972 after serving about two years. His brother served about two-and-a-half years.
The Berrigan brothers continued to be active in the peace movement, starting the Plowshares Movement, an anti-nuclear weapons campaign in 1980.
Both were arrested that year after entering a General Electric nuclear missile facility in King of Prussia, Pennsylvania, and damaging nuclear warhead nose cones.
Philip Berrigan died of cancer in 2002 at the age of 79.
