A US Army veteran was charged on Wednesday with providing classified information to a journalist for a book that alleged drug trafficking, murder, and corruption at a military base where she had worked, the Department of Justice said.
Courtney Williams, 40, of Wagram, North Carolina, was indicted by a federal grand jury on charges related to "her alleged transmission of classified national defense information to individuals not authorized to receive it, including a journalist," the Justice Department said in a statement. Prosecutors alleged Williams violated a provision of the US Espionage Act.
The case comes as free-speech advocates have raised concerns about the Trump administration's aggressive posture toward media leaks from government employees upset with US policies and actions.
Williams worked from 2010 to 2016 for a special military unit at the U.S. Army base in Fort Bragg, North Carolina, and held a "Top Secret/Sensitive Compartmented Information security clearance," the Justice Department said.
Prosecutors allege that between 2022 and 2025, Williams repeatedly communicated by phone and text message with a journalist seeking information for an article and a book about the unit. Williams and the journalist spent more than 10 hours on phone calls and exchanged more than 180 messages, the department said.
While court filings did not identify the reporter, journalist Seth Harp wrote a book published last year titled "The Fort Bragg Cartel: Drug Trafficking and Murder in the Special Forces" and an accompanying article that named Williams as a source and attributed specific statements to her.
Unauthorized disclosures of national defense through social media posts
The Justice Department alleged that some of those statements contained "classified national defense information." Prosecutors also said Williams made what they called unauthorized disclosures of national defense information through her social media accounts.
A representative for Williams could not immediately be reached for comment.
Harp said after the indictment that Williams was a "courageous whistleblower who exposed rampant gender discrimination and sexual harassment in the US Army's Delta Force." He also said Williams wanted to be quoted by name in his work and cast the charges against her as "vague and weak."
The Justice Department cited messages from Williams to the journalist, sent at the time of the book's release, in which she expressed concerns "about the amount of classified information being disclosed." She also messaged another person, the department did not identify, expressing fear that she might get arrested for the disclosure, prosecutors said.
Williams signed a classified information non-disclosure agreement when she joined the special military unit in 2010 and again when she left that job, according to the complaint filed against her.
Prior US administrations have on rare occasions also pursued legal cases against sources of leaks to the media that have aimed to expose government wrongdoing, dating as far back as the "Pentagon Papers" from the Vietnam War and as recently as the Iraq war logs in this century.
FBI Director Kash Patel praises FBI, Justice Department
FBI Director Kash Patel released a statement praising the FBI Counterintelligence & Espionage Division and the Justice Department for the arrest, saying it should serve as a message to "any would-be leaker."
"This FBI will not tolerate those who seek to betray our country and put Americans in harm’s way."
Shir Perets contributed to this report.