Courtney Williams, an Army veteran accused of leaking classified information about a special commando unit at Fort Bragg, North Carolina, was ordered released on home detention with location monitoring pending a possible trial, a judge ruled Monday in federal court in Raleigh.
U.S. Magistrate Judge Brian Meyers agreed to the release conditions after Williams appeared following her arrest last week. She wore a striped jumpsuit in court, and the judge imposed restrictions that bar her from contacting the media or using social media.
Williams, 40, is charged with four counts of communicating and disclosing national defense information about a “special military unit” after working for it as a civilian. Prosecutors have said the allegations involve members’ names, tactics and a unit alias, and each count carries potential prison time and monetary penalties.
The case has been unfolding against a backdrop of court filings that, according to AP’s report, did not name the reporter or the unit. The government’s complaint and subsequent indictment were unsealed last week, the same day a grand jury indicted Williams and the Justice Department announced her arrest.
The Justice Department announcement cited an FBI official’s warning that the alleged disclosures put “our nation, our warfighters, and our allies at risk,” according to the AP account. Prosecutors allege Williams held a top-secret security clearance while working for the unit, which she did from her time as a defense contractor beginning in 2010 until 2016, and later while employed by the Department of Defense.
According to court documents described by the wire service, the indictment alleges that between 2022 and 2025 Williams was in contact with the author of a related book, Seth Harp, including more than 10 hours of phone calls and exchanging hundreds of text messages. The indictment says Williams unlawfully disclosed a unit “cover alias identity issued and owned,” tactics and techniques 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, in a written statement reported by AP, said Williams is a “courageous whistleblower” who raised discrimination and harassment concerns within the unit and that the government’s case would not hold up. He wrote that he was “confident that the DOJ’s slapdash indictment, full of misleadingly juxtaposed quotations taken out of context, will fall apart upon careful scrutiny,” arguing that podcast and YouTube content by former unit members incidentally revealed unit details that the government now labels a crime by Williams.
Williams’ attorney, Christian Dysart, declined to comment after the Monday hearing. In an FBI agent’s affidavit described by AP, prosecutors say Williams signed nondisclosure documents related to classified materials while working for the unit and again when she left her job; the affidavit also says she messaged a journalist expressing concern about “the amount of classified information being disclosed” and told her mother she may get arrested “for disclosing classified information.”