James Thomas Ashbacher, of Spring Lake, N.C., a former U.S. Army Special Operations Command contractor, was arrested on Tuesday and charged with posting classified military footage online and stealing $40,000 night-vision goggles.
The 37-year-old worked for a company providing security services at Fort Bragg in North Carolina starting around 2021 and held a top-secret clearance with access to sensitive compartmented information, according to the indictment.
He shared 10 classified videos between September 2023 and February 2024, which included “national defense information,” prosecutors allege.
Ashbacher tried to remove the videos and wrote in private messages to another user that he was “just trying to save my a**” and that he was “trying to do some damage control.”
The next day, he deactivated his social media account, according to prosecutors.
Six of the videos “revealed unit-specific and sensitive tactics, techniques and procedures and call signs associated to an organizational structure within a specialized military unit,” prosecutors said.
They alleged that one video revealed “information about specialized alternative compensatory control measures programs of the military,” and three posed “risk of foreign adversaries creating a method to defeat or encounter the capabilities demonstrated.”
During a search of his home in April 2025, investigators said that they recovered the missing night vision goggles, which Ashbacher admitted to stealing, according to the indictment.
Investigators also found a document with his name on it that appeared to be a classified military award, even though he had never received that award, prosecutors said.
