RALEIGH, NORTH CAROLINA — Former Department of Defense contractor Courtney Williams, 40, of Wagram, North Carolina, was arrested Tuesday by the FBI and charged with violating a provision of the Espionage Act for allegedly sharing classified information about an elite military commando unit with a journalist. Williams appeared in Raleigh federal court on Wednesday, where a magistrate judge unsealed the case against her.

Williams was ordered held by the U.S. Marshals Service pending further hearings, with a preliminary hearing scheduled for April 13. Court records did not immediately name her lawyer.

The government alleges that between 2022 and 2025, Williams was in contact with an unnamed journalist, exchanging more than 180 messages and logging more than 10 hours of telephone calls. Federal prosecutors said she shared classified information that was used in an article and a book. The journalist published both works naming Williams as a source and attributing statements to her that prosecutors said contained classified national defense information. Court documents do not name the reporter or the military unit, though dates and details in the case match those in an article and book about the Army's Delta Force written by Seth Harp.

Williams is charged with violating federal law and multiple nondisclosure agreements by sharing classified details of her work with a special military unit at Fort Bragg, North Carolina, where she worked from 2010 to 2016 as an operational support technician responsible for tactics, techniques and procedures used in sensitive missions. Between 2010 and 2016, she also received training on the proper handling, safeguarding, and storage of classified information. Her access to classified information was suspended based on an internal investigation, and she was debriefed in September 2015, signing a nondisclosure agreement confirming her understanding that unauthorized disclosure could constitute a criminal offense.

According to an FBI affidavit, Williams told the journalist: "Other than a few factual errors, I would definitely have been concerned with the amount of classified information being disclosed." In another message, she wrote: "I thought things I was telling you so you could have a better general understanding of how the (SMU) was set up or operated would not be published and it feels like an entire TTP (Tactics, Techniques and Procedures) was sent out in my name giving them a chance to legally persecute me." The investigation identified at least 10 batches of documents that Williams intended to provide to the journalist, according to the affidavit.

"Anyone divulging information they vowed to protect to a reporter for publication is reckless, self-serving and damages our nation's security," FBI Special Agent in Charge Reid Davis in North Carolina said in a Justice Department news release. "She swore an oath to safeguard our nation's secrets as an employee supporting a Special Military Unit of the Army, but she allegedly betrayed that oath by sharing classified information with a media outlet and putting our nation, our warfighters, and our allies at risk," FBI Counterintelligence and Espionage Division Assistant Director Roman Rozhavsky said in a statement.

Harp described Williams as a whistleblower and truth-teller in a statement.