Indian-Origin US Adviser Ashley Tellis Arrested for Possessing Classified Documents

Ashley Tellis, an India-born American foreign policy adviser long associated with the US State Department, has been arrested and charged with unlawfully retaining classified national defense documents and allegedly meeting with Chinese officials multiple times.

Tellis, 64, was charged in a Virginia district court on October 13, according to reports. A naturalized US citizen and one of the country’s leading experts on India, Tellis played a key role in the India–US civil nuclear deal negotiations in the mid-2000s.

Federal investigators found more than 1,000 pages of top-secret and secret documents at his home in Vienna, Virginia, during a court-authorized search on October 11. The FBI affidavit alleges that Tellis, who held top-secret clearance and access to compartmented information, improperly accessed and printed classified material from State Department systems.

Video surveillance reportedly showed him at the State Department’s Harry S Truman Building on September 25 printing several hundred pages of classified material, including a 1,288-page document on US Air Force tactics. He allegedly renamed the file “Econ Reform” before printing and deleting it.

A day before the search, security footage from a classified facility in Alexandria allegedly captured Tellis hiding documents in notepads and placing them into a leather briefcase before leaving the building.

According to the affidavit, Tellis also met Chinese officials on several occasions at restaurants in Fairfax, Virginia, between September 2022 and September 2025. During one meeting on September 15, 2022, he was seen entering with a manila envelope that was not in his possession when he left. The officials reportedly discussed topics including Iranian-Chinese relations and US-Pakistan ties.

Until his arrest, Tellis served as an unpaid senior adviser at the State Department and a contractor in the Defense Department’s Office of Net Assessment. He also held a senior fellowship at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.

The FBI said Tellis was planning to travel to Rome with his family on the evening of October 11, the day agents searched his residence.