Raleigh, North Carolina – An Army veteran has been accused of sharing confidential information about a file Elite commando Unit with a journalist, which one official said puts the country, US military personnel and the country’s allies at risk.
Courtney Williams, 40, of Wagram, North Carolina, is accused of violating federal law, as well as several nondisclosure agreements, by sharing details of her work with a “special military unit” at Fort Bragg, North Carolina.
“Anyone who discloses information they have pledged to protect to a reporter to publish is reckless, self-serving, and harmful to the security of our country,” Reed Davis, FBI Special Agent in Charge of North Carolina, said in a U.S. Department of Justice press release.
Williams “took an oath to protect our nation’s secrets as an employee supporting an Army special forces unit, but she betrayed that oath by sharing classified information with a media outlet and endangering our nation, our warfighters, and our allies,” Roman Rozhavsky, assistant director of the FBI’s Counterintelligence and Espionage Division, said in the statement.
Williams, specifically accused of violating a provision of the Espionage Act, appeared Wednesday in Raleigh federal court, where a magistrate judge unsealed the case against her, which was initially filed late last week, according to online court records. The U.S. Marshals Service ordered her held pending hearings scheduled for early next week.
Court records did not immediately list Williams’ attorney. A man who answered the phone and identified himself as a member of Williams’ family declined to comment on the accusations on Wednesday.
Although the reporter and unit are not named in court filings, the dates and details match an article and book about the Army’s secretive Delta Force that he wrote Seth is on the run.
Williams was the focus of a 2025 Politico article titled: “My Life Became a Living Hell: One Woman’s Career in Delta Force, the Army’s Most Elite Unit.” This coincided with the release of Harp’s book, “The Fort Bragg Cartel,” which alleges sexual harassment and discrimination.
In a statement to WRAL-TV, Harp called Williams a “courageous whistleblower and truth teller.”
“Former Delta Force personnel disclose ‘National Defense Information’ on podcasts and YouTube shows every day, but the government is pursuing Courtney for the sole reason that she exposed sexual harassment and gender discrimination in the unit,” Harp’s statement said. “This is an 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 and during “sensitive missions,” Special Agent Jocelyn Fox wrote in the affidavit.
According to Fox, Williams’ access to classified information has been suspended “based on an internal investigation.” Fox said Williams was questioned in September 2015 and signed a non-disclosure agreement.
The government alleges that Williams had contact with the unnamed journalist between 2022 and 2025.
“During this period, Williams and the journalist had more than 10 hours of phone calls and exchanged more than 180 messages,” the news release said.
Fox cited a text between the two that she said occurred on or around the day the book and article were published.
“Other than some factual errors, I certainly would have been concerned about the amount of confidential information that was disclosed,” Williams’ text said, according to the affidavit. “I thought the things I was telling you so you could have a better general understanding of how SMU was set up or operated would not be published and it is as if the entire TTP (Tactics, Techniques and Procedures) were sent in my name which gave them an opportunity to legally persecute me.”
Fox also referred to an alleged exchange between Williams and her mother.
“I might actually get arrested and not even get a free copy of the book,” the affidavit said. When her mother asked why she was arrested, Williams replied “for revealing confidential information.”
So far, the investigation has identified at least 10 sets of collected documents that Williams intended to provide to the journalist, Fox wrote.
__
Associated Press writer Eric Tucker in Washington contributed to this report.