Leaks in the Era of the Competency Crisis

With the arrest last week of U.S. Army veteran Courtney Williams, it has to be said: An underappreciated feature of classified leaks in the modern era is the frequency with which journalists unintentionally lead investigators straight to their sources.

In the last decade or so there have been at least a half-dozen such cases. Once or twice might be bad luck — more than that, however, and it begins to look like a trend.

On April 7, the FBI arrested the 40-year-old Williams and charged her with transmitting classified information to Rolling Stone contributing editor Seth Harp. What’s especially striking about this story, perhaps more striking than the leaks themselves, is the simplicity with which the leaker was caught.

Harp had previously named Williams in his reporting, quoted her at length, and, in some instances, used her likeness, such that federal investigators needed only to skim his reporting to find their culprit.

Harp, for his part, maintains that his source “has committed no crime,” which is interesting considering Williams told him specifically in 2025 that she was “concerned about the amount of classified information being disclosed.”