By ALLEN G. BREED and GARY D. ROBERTSON Associated Press
RALEIGH, N.C. (AP) — An Army veteran has been charged with sharing classified information about an elite commando unit with a journalist, which one official said put the country, members of the U.S. military and the nation’s allies at risk.
Courtney Williams, 40, of Wagram, North Carolina, is accused of violating federal law, as well as multiple nondisclosure agreements by sharing details of her work with a “special military unit” at Fort Bragg, North Carolina.
“Anyone divulging information they vowed to protect to a reporter for publication is reckless, self-serving and damages our nation’s security,” Reid Davis, the FBI special agent in charge in North Carolina, said in a U.S. Justice Department news release.
Williams “swore an oath to safeguard our nation’s secrets as an employee supporting a Special Military Unit of the Army, but she allegedly betrayed that oath by sharing classified information with a media outlet and putting our nation, our warfighters, and our allies at risk,” Roman Rozhavsky, an assistant director of the FBI’s Counterintelligence and Espionage Division, said in the statement.
Williams, who is specifically charged with violating a provision of the Espionage Act, appeared Wednesday in Raleigh federal court, where a magistrate judge unsealed the case against her, initially filed late last week, according to online court records. She was ordered held by the U.S. Marshals Service pending hearings set for early next week.
Court records didn’t immediately name Williams’ lawyer. A man who answered a phone and identified himself as a family member of Williams declined to comment on the charges Wednesday.
Although the reporter and unit are not named in the court filings, dates and details match an article and book about the Army’s secretive Delta Force written by Seth Harp.
Williams was the focus of a 2025 Politico article with the headline: “My Life Became a Living Hell: One Woman’s Career in Delta Force, the Army’s Most Elite Unit.” It coincided with the release of Harp’s book, “The Fort Bragg Cartel,” which alleges sexual harassment and discrimination.
In a statement published by WRAL-TV, Harp called Williams “a brave whistleblower and truth-teller.”
“Former Delta Force operators disclose `national defense information’ on podcasts and YouTube shows every day, but the government is going after Courtney for the sole reason that she exposed sexual harassment and gender discrimination in the unit,” Harp’s statement read. “This is a vindictive act of retaliation, plain and simple.”
According to an FBI affidavit attached to the complaint, Williams was cleared as a defense contractor in April 2010 and became a Department of Defense employee in November 2010.
She performed duties within the special military unit as an operational support technician responsible for “Tactics, Techniques and Procedures” used in preparation for and during “sensitive missions,” Special Agent Jocelyn Fox wrote in the affidavit.
According to Fox, Williams’ access to classified information was suspended “based on an internal investigation.” Fox said Williams was debriefed in September 2015 and signed a nondisclosure agreement.
The government alleges that Williams had been in contact with the unnamed journalist between 2022 and 2025.
“During this period, Williams and the Journalist had over 10 hours of telephone calls and exchanged more than 180 messages,” the news release said.
Fox cited a text between the two she said occurred on or about the day the book and article were published.
“Other than a few factual errors, I would definitely have been concerned with the amount of classified information being disclosed,” Williams’ text read, according to the affidavit. “I thought things I was telling you so you could have a better general understanding of how the (SMU) was set up or operated would not be published and it feels like an entire TTP (Tactics, Techniques and Procedures) was sent out in my name giving them a chance to legally persecute me.”
Fox also cited an alleged exchange between Williams and her mother.
”`I might actually get arrested, and I don’t even get a free copy of the book,’” the affidavit read. “When her mother asked why she may be arrested, Williams responded `for disclosing classified information.’”
Fox wrote that the investigation so far has identified at least 10 batches of documents gathered that Williams intended to provide to the journalist.
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Associated Press writer Eric Tucker in Washington contributed to this report.