Ex-Army contractor, accused of leaking classified information, to be released to home detention
RALEIGH, N.C. (AP) — An Army veteran accused of revealing classified information about an elite commando unit — members' names, tactics and a unit alias among them — to a journalist and on social media will be released awaiting a possible trial, a judge ruled Monday.
Courtney Williams, 40, who is charged with four counts of communicating and disclosing national defense information about a “special military unit” at Fort Bragg, North Carolina, after working for it as a civilian, appeared in federal court in Raleigh.
U.S. Magistrate Judge Brian Meyers agreed to release Williams, who was arrested last week and wore a striped jumpsuit in court, under home detention and location monitoring. She's barred from having contact with the media or using social media, Meyers said.
Williams' attorney, Christian Dysart, declined to comment after the hearing, which came more than a week after a criminal complaint was filed in her case.
The complaint was unsealed last week on the same day a grand jury indicted Williams and the U.S. Justice Department announced her arrest. An FBI official said then her alleged disclosures put “our nation, our warfighters, and our allies at risk.” Each count is punishable by up to 10 years in prison, the government says, along with monetary penalties.
Court documents say Williams, who was hired as a defense contractor in 2010 and became a Department of Defense employee months later, worked for a “special military unit” at Fort Bragg until 2016 and held a top-secret security clearance.
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, who lives about 35 miles (56 kilometers) from Fort Bragg, 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.” The article, which describes Williams as serving previously in the Army as an interrogator and Arabic linguist, coincided with the release of Harp’s book, “The Fort Bragg Cartel,” which alleges sexual harassment and discrimination.
The indictment alleges that between 2022 and 2025, Williams was in contact with the author, resulting in more than 10 hours of phone calls and exchanging hundreds of text messages.
The indictment alleges in part that Williams unlawfully disclosed a “cover alias identity issued and owned” by the unit; tactics and techniques the unit used to “execute covert missions without being detected”; and “true names of individuals” assigned to the unit, and “their capture during a sensitive military mission in a foreign country.”
Harp said last week in a written statement that Williams is a “courageous whistleblower” on discrimination and harassment within Delta Force and contends former unit members reveal incidentally on podcasts and YouTube shows unit details that the government now labels a crime by Williams.
“I am confident that the DOJ’s slapdash indictment, full of misleadingly juxtaposed quotations taken out of context, will fall apart upon careful scrutiny,” Harp wrote.
An FBI agent's affidavit said that Williams had signed nondisclosure documents regarding classified materials while working for the unit and as she left her job.
The affidavit says Williams messaged the journalist on or about the article's release expressing concern about “the amount of classified information being disclosed.” And in another alleged exchange, she told her mother she may get arrested “for disclosing classified information.”
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