The FBI arrested a former Army Special Operations Command contractor accused of posting classified military videos on social media, trying to cover his tracks with a casual “lol,” and walking out of Fort Bragg with $40,000 worth of night vision goggles stuffed somewhere they didn’t belong.
James Thomas Ashbacher, a North Carolina resident, worked at the U.S. Army Special Operations Command facility at Fort Bragg from approximately 2021 through March 2024, providing security and emergency management services for a private company. The job required a Top Secret security clearance with Sensitive Compartmented Information access. Prosecutors say he used that access to photograph and remove classified materials marked SECRET and post them to social media, where other users then reposted the footage on a second platform. Real nice.
The indictment describes nine or ten videos, including six that revealed unit-specific tactics, techniques, procedures, and call signs tied to a specialized military unit’s organizational structure. Another video contained information about classified Alternative Compensatory Control Measures programs. Other footage, prosecutors said, posed a risk that foreign adversaries could develop ways to defeat or counter the capabilities it demonstrated. According to Fort Bragg contractor leak charges, Ashbacher “knew that the stolen Classified Materials contained classified information that related to the national defense” and that disclosure “could be used to the injury of the United States or to the advantage of a foreign nation.”
When Ashbacher realized things were going sideways, he did what any responsible Top Secret clearance holder would do. He messaged another user on or about February 2, 2024, asking them to “take ’em down, tuck them away, and repost them in a year or two when my contract ends lol.” He then added, “Just trying to save my ass…. It is what it is….” He also acknowledged other users had likely already saved the material and described his own scrambling as “damage control.” He deactivated the account the next day. Problem solved, right?
Wrong. During a court-authorized search of Ashbacher’s home on April 30, 2025, FBI agents found what appeared to be a classified military award write-up bearing SECRET//NOFORN markings. They also found a night vision goggle system specific to a military unit within Army Special Operations Command that had been reported missing. Court records valued the equipment at approximately $40,000, and Ashbacher admitted taking it. So add stealing government property to the list alongside unlawfully transmitting and retaining national defense information.
The FBI’s Charlotte Field Office is handling the investigation with substantial assistance from the Army’s Criminal Investigation Division. Ashbacher now faces serious federal charges, and his old plan of waiting a year or two before anyone noticed has, shall we say, not aged well.
