Former Army employee charged with leaking classified info to journalist

The Justice Department announced Wednesday that the FBI has arrested a former Army employee who federal prosecutors accuse of leaking classified information to a journalist.

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Courtney Williams, 40, of North Carolina, was arrested Tuesday and charged Wednesday with transmitting “classified national defense information to persons unauthorized to receive it, including a journalist.”

Williams held a top-secret security clearance for his work with the military from 2010 to 2016, the Justice Department said in a news release. Court documents allege Williams communicated with a reporter from 2022 to 2025, during which they had “more than 10 hours of phone calls and exchanged more than 180 messages.”

The journalist, who is not named in court documents, told Williams she was seeking information about her military unit for an upcoming article and book, according to court documents. The criminal complaint states that Williams was mentioned by name in an article and in a book by the same journalist published on the same day, August 12, 2025.

Williams was named in a 2025 book by Seth Harp, titled “The Fort Bragg Cartel: Drug Trafficking and Murder in the Special Forces,” published by Viking Press, an imprint of Penguin Random House. Harp also named her in a Politico magazine article. Both were released on August 12.

The criminal complaint states that on the day the article and book were published, Williams and the reporter exchanged texts in which Williams said she was “concerned about the amount of classified information being disclosed.”

Harp’s biography on Penguin’s website identifies him as an investigative journalist and foreign correspondent and editor of Rolling Stone who has written for several publications. He is an Army veteran and attorney who was an assistant attorney general of Texas, according to his biography.

According to court documents, Williams is represented by the federal public defender for the Eastern District of North Carolina, who did not immediately respond to a request for comment Wednesday evening.

Williams wrote that she “could be arrested … for disclosing classified information” in messages with her mother, the complaint states. She then cited a statutory provision of the Espionage Act, according to the complaint.

“I might actually get arrested, and I don’t even get a free copy of the book,” Williams reportedly told her mother.

The August magazine article details Williams’ experience while working at Fort Bragg, the headquarters of Joint Special Operations Command, saying she was employed as mission support for the secret unit Delta Force.

The article said Williams described being sexually harassed and demeaned by men in her unit, including her commanding officer. Williams then filed grievances with the Army Special Operations Command’s inspector general and a discrimination complaint with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, which led to retaliation and ultimately the removal of her security clearance, the article said, adding that Williams said she eventually settled with the Army.

Harp said in a statement posted Wednesday evening on social media that Williams “is a courageous whistleblower who exposed endemic gender discrimination and sexual harassment within the U.S. Army’s Delta Force.”

“Unlike many of my sources, she was adamant about being cited by name and made no attempt to hide her identity because her actions were completely honest, legitimate and admirable,” Harp wrote.

He added that Williams was not charged for protecting classified information “but for retaliating against a woman who sought only to improve the working conditions of female soldiers and civilian employees of the military.”

The Defense Ministry directed an inquiry about the matter to the military, which did not immediately respond to a request for comment Wednesday evening. Pentagon chief spokesman Sean Parnell said in a statement published in the August magazine article that “this department has a zero-tolerance policy for any type of harassment.”

Viking Press did not immediately respond to a request for comment Wednesday evening. Politico declined to comment.

Williams was arrested days after President Donald Trump threatened to jail journalists at a media outlet that reported that an airman was missing after a U.S. fighter jet was shot down in Iran last week.

Trump said he was looking for anyone who leaked information about the aviator and would pressure the media to help.

“We think we can find out,” he said. “Because we’re going to go to the media company that published it, and we’re going to say, ‘National security. Drop it or go to jail.'”