FBI Director Kash Patel said the arrest “sends a message to any potential leakers”.
A US Army veteran who served with the elite Delta Force commando unit has been charged with providing top secret data to a reporter, the US Justice Department said.
Courtney Williams, of Wagram, North Carolina, was indicted by a federal grand jury on Wednesday “He is accused of disseminating classified national defense information to persons not authorized to receive it, including a journalist.” the DOJ said in a statement. The preliminary charge against the 40-year-old man carries a prison sentence of up to ten years.
The court filings do not name the reporter in question, but Politico and other outlets have 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 cited as a source on several occasions in the book. It also includes many of his photographs.
According to Harp, the woman suffered several years “Vicious Harassment” of a sexual nature while working at the Fort Bragg base in Fayetteville, North Carolina.
The DOJ said the veteran had a ‘Top Secret/Sensitive Compartmental Information Security Clearance’ and signed nondisclosure agreements when she joined and left her unit.
Williams will remain in custody until at least Monday, when a judge will decide on prosecutors’ request to keep her detained pending her trial.
FBI Director Kash Patel said in a post on X on Thursday that Williams’ arrest resulted from “Outstanding Work” By the operatives of his agency.
“Let this serve as a message to any potential leakers: We are working on these cases, and we are making arrests. This FBI will not tolerate those who seek to betray our country and harm Americans.” Patel wrote.
Harp called for veteran’s impeachment “a rage,” debating on that “(President Donald) Trump’s adamant DOJ won’t even say what ‘classified information’ it allegedly leaked.”
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“The FBI is unable to solve real crimes, like all the murders that happened at Fort Bragg, involving elite soldiers smuggling drugs, so they are ready to retaliate against courageous whistleblowers like Courtney Williams, whose only ‘crime’ was telling the truth about Delta Force,” The journalist wrote on
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