A prominent Indian-American academic and former US government adviser has been arrested and charged with the unlawful detention of national security information, including thousands of pages of top secret documents that were found at his home in Virginia.
Ashley Tellis, 64, who served on the national security council of the former US president George W Bush and is credited for helping to negotiate the US-India nuclear deal, was arrested and charged over the weekend.
According to court documents, FBI agents searched his home and found thousands of pages of classified and top secret records. Due to his employment with the state department and the Pentagon, Tellis had a top secret security clearance.
Tellis is alleged to have entered the US state department and a defence department facility and to have “printed on government computers, or asked a colleague to print, classified documents on topics including US military aircraft capabilities”.
The FBI has also accused Tellis of meeting Chinese officials on multiple occasions over the years and handing over documents in an envelope.
Tellis has denied the charges. In a statement, his lawyers said: “Ashley J Tellis is a widely respected scholar and senior policy adviser. We will be vigorously contesting the allegations brought against him, specifically any insinuation of his operating on behalf of a foreign adversary.”
Tellis had served in the US foreign service and is a senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, a Washington thinktank, where he had become a well-known strategic expert on US-India relations.
In India, where Tellis was born and was a regular commentator on foreign policy, news of his arrest ignited a political storm. “The forces working against India are beginning to unravel in ways few could have imagined,” said Amit Malviya, the head of the IT cell – a digital and social media arm – of the ruling Bharatiya Janata party (BJP), who had objected to Tellis’s critical writings on some BJP policies.
Trump administration officials, including the director of national intelligence, Tulsi Gabbard, have vowed to prosecute individuals who mishandle classified information.
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Lindsey Halligan, the US attorney for the eastern district of Virginia, said the charges “as alleged in this case represent a grave risk to the safety and security of our citizens”.
A state department official confirmed that Tellis was arrested on Saturday, but declined to comment further. The Pentagon said it would not comment on ongoing litigation.
