Indian-origin US advisor Ashley Tellis denies allegations after arrest over classified docs, China links

Indian-origin US advisor Ashley Tellis, who was arrested for retaining classified documents and meeting Chinese officials, has denied the allegations against him, his lawyers have said.

Tellis, 64, who has worked in or advised the US government for over two decades, was found to have kept more than 1,000 pages of top-secret or classified documents in his home.

“Ashley J. Tellis is a widely respected scholar and senior policy advisor,” his lawyers, Deborah Curtis and John Nassikas, said in a statement.

“We will be vigorously contesting the allegations brought against him, specifically any insinuation of his operating on behalf of a foreign adversary,” they said.

Who is Tellis?

According to the Justice Department, Tellis, born in India, was an unpaid senior advisor to the State Department and also a contractor with the Office of Net Assessment at the Department of Defense.

Tellis joined the State Department in 2001 and is accused of retrieving and retaining national defence information, according to an affidavit.

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He is also a senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and served in senior positions under former president George W. Bush.

He helped negotiate the Bush administration’s civil nuclear deal with India that was seen as a landmark in building ties between the world’s two largest democracies.

But in recent years, Tellis has become known as one of the most outspoken contrarians in Washington on the US courtship of India.

What was found?

Owing to his affiliations, Tellis held top-secret clearance and had access to sensitive documents. During a search at his Vienna, Va., home, authorities found a thousand pages of documents marked “TOP SECRET” and “SECRET.”

The affidavit states that Tellis instructed a coworker at a government facility to print multiple classified documents for him on September 12.

Late in the evening of September 25, Tellis entered the State Department, where he served as an unpaid advisor, and appeared to print from a secret document on US Air Force techniques.

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Tellis met multiple times with Chinese government officials at a restaurant in the Washington suburb of Fairfax, Virginia.

At one dinner, Tellis entered with a manila envelope but did not appear to leave with it, and on two occasions, the Chinese officials presented him a gift bag, the affidavit said.

With inputs from agencies