Former Army employee charged with leaking classified info to journalist

Courtney Williams was named in a magazine article that included details of her allegations of being harassed and retaliated against while working in a covert unit.

The Justice Department announced Wednesday that the FBI had arrested a former Army employee whom federal prosecutors accused of leaking classified information to a journalist.

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Courtney Williams, 40, of North Carolina, was arrested Tuesday and charged Wednesday with transmitting “classified national defense information to individuals not authorized to receive it, including a journalist.”

Williams held top secret security clearance for her work with the military from 2010 to 2016, the Justice Department said in a news release. Court documents allege that Williams communicated with a journalist from 2022 to 2025, during which they had “over 10 hours of phone calls and exchanged more than 180 messages.”