Courtney Williams arrested in classified leak case tied to book The Fort Bragg Cartel
Courtney Williams, a former operational support technician for a special Army unit, has been arrested on accusations that she leaked classified national defense information to a journalist. She was identified as a source in The Fort Bragg Cartel, a book about killings, overdoses and drug-trafficking allegations involving elite military circles at the North Carolina base.
Williams, 40, of Wagram, North Carolina, was arrested Monday and indicted Tuesday in the Eastern District of North Carolina. Federal prosecutors say she is charged under the Espionage Act with willfully transmitting national defense information to people not authorized to receive it.
According to court records, Williams worked with a Special Military Unit from 2010 to 2016, first as a defense contractor and later as a civilian employee.
She served in the unit’s Mission Support Troop and held a Top Secret/Sensitive Compartmented Information clearance, which prosecutors say gave her daily access to classified operations, tactics, techniques and procedures, as well as the true identities of unit members.
Prosecutors say Williams signed multiple nondisclosure agreements, received security briefings and was formally debriefed when she left the job, including warnings that her obligation to protect classified information continued after her employment ended.
The case alleges Williams was in repeated contact with investigative journalist Seth Harp from early 2022 through August 2025, though Harp was not named in court documents. According to the complaint, they exchanged more than 180 messages and spent more than 10 hours on phone calls.
The complaint also cited a November 2022 message about returning an external storage device in a prepaid envelope, which they say suggests Williams may have provided documents, photographs, notes or other material.
The charge centers on material published on Aug. 12, 2025, around the time when Harp’s book and a related article were released.
According to the complaint, both works identified Williams by name as a source and included information about the unit that an original classification authority later determined was properly classified at the SECRET level and marked NOFORN, meaning it was not authorized for release to foreign nationals or foreign governments.
Prosecutors say the published material included tactics, techniques and procedures used in sensitive missions. According to the indictment, those methods were classified because disclosure could expose personnel, compromise operations and make the techniques unusable.
Court papers say Williams later expressed concern about what had been published. Prosecutors allege she told the journalist she wished she had seen the material before release because she was “concerned about the amount of classified information being disclosed.”
In messages cited by investigators, Williams also allegedly told her mother, “I might actually get arrested,” and said it was “for disclosing classified information.” When her mother asked how she knew she could face legal trouble, prosecutors say Williams replied: “I have known my entire career,” adding that “they tell you everyday … 100 times a day.”
In another message cited in court papers, she allegedly said she was “probably going to jail for life.”
The Fort Bragg Cartel examined killings, overdoses and drug-trafficking allegations involving soldiers and others tied to Fort Bragg, one of the Army’s most prominent special operations hubs.
Harp, an investigative journalist and Iraq war veteran, rejected the case and said Williams was being prosecuted for speaking publicly about alleged gender discrimination and sexual harassment inside Delta Force.
“Courtney Williams is a courageous whistleblower who exposed rampant gender discrimination and sexual harassment in the US Army’s Delta Force,” Harp said in a statement. “Courtney Williams is a veteran, a mother, and a patriotic American. She has committed no crime. Her arrest and imprisonment is an outrage.”
He also said former Delta Force and SEAL Team 6 operators have publicly discussed similar tactics and procedures in podcasts and on YouTube without legal consequences, and said the case was retaliatory.
“The DOJ indicted Courtney not to protect such information from disclosure but to retaliate against a women who only sought to improve workplace conditions for female soldiers and civilian employees of the military,” Harp said.
“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,” he added.
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