FBI ARRESTS FORT BRAGG CONTRACTOR WHO POSTED CLASSIFIED SPECIAL OPS FOOTAGE AND STOLE NIGHT VISION GOGGLES
James Thomas Ashbacher, 37, of Spring Lake, North Carolina, held a Top Secret clearance with Sensitive Compartmented Information access while working as a security contractor at the U.S. Army Special Operations Command at Fort Bragg. According to the Department of Justice and the indictment, he photographed and posted videos and images of classified military operations on social media. Other users then spread the material to a second site.
When the posts started circulating, Ashbacher messaged someone asking them to “take ‘em down, tuck them away, and repost them in a year or two when my contract ends lol.” He added that he was “Just trying to save my a— …. It is what it is ….” and admitted he was “trying to do some damage control lol.” He also wrote, “It was fun while it lasted.”
The indictment states that 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.”
FBI agents searched his home and recovered a classified award write-up containing additional national defense information marked SECRET//NOFORN, along with a night vision goggle system that had been reported missing from a special operations unit. Ashbacher has been charged with unlawfully transmitting and retaining national defense information and with theft of government property. He was arrested this week after an indictment was unsealed.
This is not a whistleblower case. This is a contractor with the highest level of access treating America’s special operations secrets like internet content and then scrambling once it went public. Troops put their lives on the line.
Contractors who abuse that trust put those same troops at risk. The DOJ’s charges make clear he understood exactly what he was doing. No excuses. No soft landings. Lock him up.-DTP