FBI arrests ex-Fort Bragg employee over alleged classified leak to journalist

The FBI has arrested a former military special operations employee accused of providing classified information to the media, the agency’s director Kash Patel announced on Wednesday.The US Department of Justice said in a press release that the former employee, identified as Courtney Williams, 40, was arrested on Tuesday and indicted on Wednesday for allegedly sharing classified material with a journalist.While the journalist is not named in the criminal complaint, Williams was interviewed by the investigative reporter Seth Harp for his 2025 nonfiction book about Fort Bragg, the North Carolina headquarters of the US Army’s Delta Force, a clandestine special operations unit.The book, titled The Fort Bragg Cartel, examined a string of deaths at the base and the alleged involvement of elite soldiers in drug trafficking.Williams worked at Fort Bragg for six years, according to the FBI’s criminal complaint. She was a custodian of sensitive documents, including fake passports for undercover agents, and would occasionally field calls related to the unit’s front companies, according to an August 2025 excerpt of Harp’s book published in Politico.Harp wrote about harassment Williams said she faced as an employee, including a time where she was instructed to bend over so higher-ranking officers could see if her pants were transparent, which would have constituted a dress-code violation. Williams later filed a grievance and a discrimination claim with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC), per the excerpt.In a criminal complaint filed on 3 April in the US district court for the eastern district of North Carolina, federal authorities said the article and book contained classified national defense information. Williams was debriefed on her obligation to protect such classified information beyond her time as an employee, authorities said.“Let this serve as a message to any would-be leakers: we’re working these cases, and we’re making arrests,” Patel wrote on X on Wednesday. “This FBI will not tolerate those who seek to betray our country and put Americans in harm’s way.”The complaint described how federal agents obtained phone records showing contact between Williams and “the journalist”, presumably Harp, from 2022 to present day.Williams texted him, on 12 August, the day the Politico story was published, where she expressed concern over the “amount of classified information being disclosed”.“I thought things I was telling you [were] so you could have a better general understanding,” she said, according to the complaint.Williams also took fault with the portrayal of her and other female employees.“It just feels like the mark was missed. I’m taking deep breaths, but have a feeling this is going to be more of a nightmare for my children than not,” she wrote, according to the court filing.Harp could not be immediately reached by the Guardian for comment via email.After news of Williams’s arrest, Harp issued a sharp rebuke of the FBI.“Ironically, while the FBI was monitoring my phone and investigating Courtney on vague and weak charges, the perpetrators of half a dozen murders involving Fort Bragg soldiers involved in the drug trade have gone entirely unsolved. A real police agency would go after real criminals instead of engaging in this sort of penny-ante political theater,” Harp wrote in a statement posted on X.The FBI did not immediately respond to a request for comment about the allegations.Harp also denied receiving a drive from Williams with classified information on it, referencing a claim in the complaint. He said the drive contained a public EEOC complaint whose size was too large to send over email.“Courtney Williams is a courageous whistleblower who exposed rampant gender discrimination and sexual harassment in the US Army’s Delta Force. Unlike many of my sources, she was adamant that she be quoted by name and made no attempt to conceal her identity because her actions were entirely above-board, legitimate, and admirable,” he said.