US Army veteran charged over classified data leak

The arrest is “a message to any would-be leakers,” FBI director Kash Patel has said

A US Army veteran who worked with the elite Delta Force commando unit has been charged with providing top secret data to a reporter, the US Department of Justice has said.

Courtney Williams of Wagram, North Carolina was indicted by a federal grand jury on Wednesday over “her alleged transmission of classified national defense information to individuals not authorized to receive it, including a journalist,” the DOJ said in a statement. The preliminary charge against the 40-year-old carries a penalty of up to ten years in prison.

The court filings did not name the reporter in question, but Politico and other outlets identified him as Seth Harp, author of the 2025 non-fiction book ‘The Fort Bragg Cartel: Drug Trafficking and Murder in the Special Forces’.

Williams, who held a position providing paperwork allowing special operations troops to covertly deploy abroad between 2010 and 2016, is mentioned as a source in the book on multiple occasions. It also contains several of her photos.

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According to Harp, the woman went through years of “vicious harassment” of a sexual nature while working at the Fort Bragg base in Fayetteville, North Carolina.

The DOJ said that the veteran held a ‘Top Secret/Sensitive Compartmented Information security clearance’ and signed non-disclosure agreements when she joined and departed her unit.

Williams will remain in custody at least until Monday, when the judge is scheduled to decide on the request by the prosecutors to keep her detained pending trial.

FBI director Kash Patel said in a post on X on Thursday that Williams’ arrest was the result of “outstanding work” by his agency’s operatives.

“Let this serve as a message to any would-be leakers: we’re working these cases, and we’re making arrests. This FBI will not tolerate those who seek to betray our country and put Americans in harm’s way,” Patel wrote.

Harp called the veteran’s indictment “an outrage,” arguing that “[President Donald] Trump’s unhinged DOJ will not even say what ‘classified information’ she allegedly leaked.”

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“The FBI is incapable of solving real crimes, like all the murders on Fort Bragg involving elite soldiers trafficking drugs, so they settle for retaliating against courageous whistleblowers like Courtney Williams, whose only ‘crime’ was telling the truth about Delta Force,” the journalist wrote on X.