Former Fort Bragg employee charged with leaking classified information
A federal grand jury in North Carolina indicted a former Army employee at Fort Bragg this week for allegedly revealing classified national defense information to a journalist.
Courtney Williams served in a support capacity for the Special Operations unit Delta Force from 2010 to 2016. As such, she held a Top Secret/Sensitive Compartmented Information security clearance. A grand jury indicted Williams on Wednesday, one day after her arrest.
“Anyone divulging information they vowed to protect to a reporter for publication is reckless, self-serving, and damages our nation’s security,” Reid Davis, FBI special agent in charge in North Carolina, said in a Justice Department press release.
According to the indictment, Williams, 40, disclosed classified information after her time at Fort Bragg ended. She and a journalist allegedly spoke for more than 10 hours on the telephone and exchanged 180-plus messages from 2022 to 2025.
Reporting by The New York Times detailed that a book and Politico Magazine article last year mentioned Williams. In the article by journalist Seth Harp, headlined “My Life Became a Living Hell,” Williams said she was the victim of sexual harassment and gender discrimination at Fort Bragg.
The New York Times cited one of Williams’ contentions. In it, she allegedly had to bend over while senior officers determined “whether her underwear could be seen through the fabric.”
To be clear, the Justice Department release does not specify the journalist, article, and book by name for which Williams is allegedly to have revealed classified information. It simply refers to “The Journalist.”
Williams expressed concern about the fallout on the day the article and book were released, the FBI claimed in its complaint.
The fallout from the publication of the article and book, “The Fort Bragg Cartel,” purportedly worried Williams. In various messages, some to a third party, “the amount of classified information being disclosed” bothered Williams. She also was concerned that “I might actually get arrested” and cited the Espionage Act, the Justice Department alleged.
In one message, someone asked Williams how she knew she might have committed a crime, according to the FBI. The former Army employee responded that she knew, because “they tell you every day… 100 times a day.”
“[I’m] probably going to jail for life,” Williams said in another message.
Williams is currently in custody, pending a preliminary hearing Monday.
“We trust our war fighting individuals to cooperate as a team to protect our military and country,” said Ellis Boyle, U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of North Carolina. “We will pursue criminal charges to keep these warriors safe whenever we find leakers exalting their own feelings over the safety of the United States.”
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