“I’m just trying to save my a**.” That is what James Thomas Ashbacher wrote in a private message to another user, asking them to delete videos he had posted himself. The videos showed classified military operations, and prosecutors say he shot them on the job.
A badge at Fort Bragg
Ashbacher, 37, of Spring Lake, North Carolina, started around 2021 with a private company that supplied security and emergency management services to a U.S. Army special operations facility at Fort Bragg. The work required a Top Secret clearance with access to Sensitive Compartmented Information. According to the indictment, that access put him close enough to film and photograph operations that were never meant to leave the base.
Ten videos
Between September 2023 and February 2024, prosecutors say, he shared 10 classified videos on a social media site. Six revealed unit-specific tactics, techniques and procedures along with call signs tied to a specialized military unit. One exposed details of alternative compensatory control measures programs. Three, in the government’s words, risked letting foreign adversaries work out a way to defeat the capabilities on display.
Other users reposted the material to a second site. Ashbacher then sent a private message asking one of them to take it down, saying he was “trying to do some damage control.” The next day he deactivated his account.
What agents found at his house
Investigators searched his home in April 2025. They recovered Army night-vision goggles reported missing, worth $40,000, and Ashbacher admitted taking them, according to the indictment. They also found a document bearing his name that looked like a classified military award, though he had never received one. Prosecutors describe it as an “award write-up” holding more national defense information.
FBI agents arrested him on Tuesday, October 27. He faces federal charges of unlawfully transmitting and retaining national defense information and theft of government property. The FBI’s Charlotte Field Office and the Army Criminal Investigation Division ran the investigation. Trial Attorney Leslie Esbrook of the Justice Department’s National Security Division and Assistant U.S. Attorney Logan Liles are prosecuting.
Sources
- United States Army
- Former North Carolina military contractor accused of leaking defense secrets
- Former US Army contractor charged with posting military secrets to social media
- Former Army official pleads guilty in Hawaii defense contract bribery scheme
- FBI arrests North Carolina man for allegedly posting classified information on social media
- North Carolina Man Indicted In Fort Bragg Military Secrets Leak, Goggles Theft
Photo: Daniel / Unsplash (Unsplash License)
