Ashley Tellis, a prominent Indian-American national security expert and long-time US adviser, has been accused of hoarding classified documents and repeatedly meeting Chinese officials, stirring concern over possible Beijing ties and jolting Washington’s foreign policy circles.
An affidavit dated October 13 in the US District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia said more than a thousand pages of classified materials – several marked “Top Secret” and “Secret” – were recovered from various parts of Tellis’s Virginia home, including three trash bags, during a Federal Bureau of Investigation search over the weekend.
The Justice Department alleges that Tellis repeatedly removed highly classified materials from secure government facilities and stored them unsecured at his residence just outside Washington.
A State Department official confirmed to the Post that Tellis, a “consultant” with the department, was arrested on Saturday. Court documents revealed that on the day of the search, Tellis and his family were scheduled to fly to Rome.
China’s embassy in Washington did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Tellis, an India-born naturalised US citizen, has been a prominent figure in Washington’s foreign policy establishment for decades.
He was one of the key negotiators of the landmark US-India civil nuclear agreement during the George W. Bush administration in 2008 and served on the National Security Council under Bush. Earlier, he was an adviser to US Ambassador to India Robert Blackwill between 2001 and 2003.
Tellis has been notably critical of the Narendra Modi government in India. Reacting to the news of the charges, Amit Malviya, head of the Bharatiya Janata Party’s National Information and Technology Department, suggested that Tellis’s past criticisms of the government now take on new context.
“This explains why Ashley Tellis, often cited and celebrated by India’s opposition, spoke so frequently and harshly against us. The forces working against India are beginning to unravel in ways few could have imagined,” he said.
According to court filings, Tellis has held top-level security clearance since 2001. He served as an unpaid senior adviser at the State Department and as a contractor with the Pentagon’s Office of Net Assessment.
He is also a senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and a regular participant in policy panels both in the US and abroad.
The affidavit says surveillance footage captured Tellis multiple times in recent weeks accessing, printing and removing classified materials from government facilities.
It says that on September 12, cameras at the Pentagon’s Mark Center in Alexandria, Virginia, showed Tellis directing a colleague to print several classified documents, including one labelled “Top Secret”.
On October 10, he was seen hiding those papers inside notepads and placing them in his leather briefcase before leaving the building, the affadavit adds.
Federal investigators also said that on September 25, Tellis accessed a classified State Department system and opened a 1,288-page US Air Force manual labelled “Secret”.
According to the court filing, he renamed the file “Econ Reform” to disguise it, printed hundreds of pages and deleted the file. The affidavit also said he printed two 40-page Air Force documents on military aircraft capabilities, both marked “Secret”.
Investigators further detailed Tellis’s repeated meetings with Chinese government officials in Fairfax, Virginia. In one 2022 dinner, he arrived carrying a “manila envelope” and left without it.
At their most recent encounter, on September 2, 2025, Chinese officials gave him a “red gift bag”. While these meetings are described in the filing, espionage charges have not been filed.
The news has resonated across Washington’s think-tank community.
Christopher Clary, a non-resident fellow at the Stimson Center, reflected on social media after the court filings were made public, recalling a meeting with Tellis in 2002.
“He has been unfailingly polite and thoughtful in countless interactions since that time, even when we have disagreed on substantive matters,” Clary said, wishing him “fairness and compassion as the legal process unfolds”.
The case was made public on Tuesday by the Department of Justice in a press release, which said Tellis was “charged by criminal complaint with the unlawful retention of national defence information”.
“We are fully focused on protecting the American people from all threats, foreign and domestic,” said Lindsey Halligan, interim US attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia.
“The charges as alleged in this case represent a grave risk to the safety and security of our citizens.
“The facts and the law in this case are clear, and we will continue following them to ensure that justice is served.” -- SOUTH CHINA MORNING POST
