TOI correspondent from Washington: The American think-tank community is in shock this week after the US justice department accused Ashley Tellis , a respected Indian-American scholar, of unlawful retention of national defense information and undocumented meetings with Chinese officials.
Tellis, 64, a naturalized US citizen and senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, was charged via a criminal complaint filed Monday following an FBI search that allegedly uncovered over a thousand pages of documents marked TOP SECRET and SECRET stored in his home.
The charging document - an affidavit filed by FBI special agent Jeffrey Scott - details how Tellis, who holds a top secret clearance with sensitive compartmented information (SCI) access, allegedly removed highly sensitive materials from secure government facilities.
SCI access is a formal authorization for individuals to handle specific US classified information. Individuals with SCI access are often required to sign a lifelong nondisclosure agreement and are restricted to working within specific sensitive compartmented information facilities (SCIFs).
According to the affidavit, the FBI investigation began after video surveillance captured Tellis engaging in “concerning activity” at two separate secure facilities in September and October 2025.
In one instance, the affidavit details repeated attempts by Tellis to print hundreds of pages of documents, including several classified SECRET/ NOFORN (not releasable to foreign nationals) pages concerning US air force tactics, techniques, and procedures and military aircraft capabilities. He also allegedly re-saved a file titled "Econ reform" that contained highly classified information before printing specific page ranges.
The affidavit states that on October 11, 2025, a federal court authorized a search warrant for Tellis’s residence in Vienna, Virginia, the same day he was scheduled to depart for planned international travel to Rome, Italy.
The affidavit also documents several meetings Tellis had with Chinese government officials between September 2022 and September 2025, raising questions about potential information compromise.
In one instance, on September 15, 2022, surveillance allegedly observed Tellis entering the restaurant with a manila envelope and departing without it, while the PRC officials entered with a gift bag. In another instance, on September 2, 2025, the PRC officials reportedly handed Tellis a red gift bag near the end of the dinner.
The conversations at these dinners, according to the affidavit, touched on sensitive topics like Iranian-Chinese relations, emerging technologies (AI), and US-Pakistan relations, all areas of expertise for Tellis.
The charges against Tellis stunned members of the strategic affairs community, many of whom have had constructive engagements with a well-regarded scholar even when they have disagreed with him. Some analysts even went so far as to argue that meeting Chinese officials, as the justice department affidavit alleged, was par for course in the strategic thinkers community.
“My good friend Ashley Tellis may have been careless with classified documents (though less than the current US president) but meeting with Chinese officials is part of his f**cking job,” Bruno Tertrais, a scholar with the French thinktank FRS, wrote on X.
In the thinktank circuit, the broad consensus was Tellis may have erred in handling classified information, but calling him a Chinese spy – which the affidavit implies but does not say directly – would be a stretch. If anything, he had long been advising Washington and New Delhi that they need to work together to deal with a rising China.
Mishandling classified or top secret documents is an old and familiar story in Washington DC. Among those accused of it more recently: Joe Biden, and before him, Donald Trump .
After he demitted office in 2020, then former President Trump was charged in a federal criminal case with willful retention of national defense information and other charges related to storing classified documents at his Mar-a-Lago residence.
Biden’s own personal attorneys discovered classified documents from his time as Vice President at the Penn Biden Center for Diplomacy and Global Engagement and his private residence in Wilmington, Delaware. Former vice-president Mike Pence was also accused of taking away classified documents.
While they were unscathed because of the privilege of high office, others like former national security advisor Sandy Berger and CIA chief general David Petraeus, had to face consequences.
After he was accused of intentionally concealing and removing a classified report detailing the Clinton administration's internal assessments of the unsuccessful 2000 millennium attack plots, Berger pled guilty in 2005 to one count of unauthorized removal and retention of classified material. He was fined $50,000 and sentenced to two years of probation with 100 hours of community service. His security clearance was revoked for three years and he was later disbarred from practicing law.
In another case, former US general David Petraeus was charged with providing eight binders of classified material, which he called his "black books," to Paula Broadwell, who was writing his biography, All In: The Education of General David Petraeus, and with whom he was allegedly in a relationship. The fallout from the affair and subsequent FBI investigation led to his resignation as CIA Director in November 2012. He was later sentenced to two years of probation and ordered to pay a $100,000 fine.
In yet another case, former assistant secretary of state Robin Raphel was also accused of being in possession of classified documents that should not have been removed from the state department. The counterintelligence investigation was reportedly triggered after US investigators intercepted a conversation where a Pakistani official claimed their government was receiving US secrets from a prominent former state department diplomat. Raphel refused a plea deal for mishandling classified documents and the case was later dropped.
While none of these cases resulted in proven charges of espionage, social media lynchmobs, including hypernationalists in India and in the US, had a field day jumping to conclusions about Tellis, ostensibly based on his writings.
Two recent pieces by Tellis in Foreign Affairs magazine offended India partisans: A May 2023 piece headlined “America’s Bad Bet on India” that explained why New Delhi would not side with Washington against Beijing, a common-enough discussion in think-tank circles.
In a more recent piece, provocatively headlined “India’s Great Power Delusions,” Tellis argued that India overestimates its influence on the world stage while lacking the economic heft, military capacity, and alliances to back its great-power ambitions. He warned that India’s attachment to strategic autonomy and multipolarity risks making the country irrelevant in an era of intensifying bipolarity, when the competition between China and the United States will shape geopolitics.
Neither piece appeared to suggest even remotely that he was shilling, much less spying, for China.
After alluding to possible exchanges of manila envelops and red gift bag, the FBI concluded its affidavit saying it "establishes probable cause in support of a criminal complaint charging Ashley Tellis with the unlawful retention of national defense information."
Tellis, 64, a naturalized US citizen and senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, was charged via a criminal complaint filed Monday following an FBI search that allegedly uncovered over a thousand pages of documents marked TOP SECRET and SECRET stored in his home.
The charging document - an affidavit filed by FBI special agent Jeffrey Scott - details how Tellis, who holds a top secret clearance with sensitive compartmented information (SCI) access, allegedly removed highly sensitive materials from secure government facilities.
SCI access is a formal authorization for individuals to handle specific US classified information. Individuals with SCI access are often required to sign a lifelong nondisclosure agreement and are restricted to working within specific sensitive compartmented information facilities (SCIFs).
According to the affidavit, the FBI investigation began after video surveillance captured Tellis engaging in “concerning activity” at two separate secure facilities in September and October 2025.
In one instance, the affidavit details repeated attempts by Tellis to print hundreds of pages of documents, including several classified SECRET/ NOFORN (not releasable to foreign nationals) pages concerning US air force tactics, techniques, and procedures and military aircraft capabilities. He also allegedly re-saved a file titled "Econ reform" that contained highly classified information before printing specific page ranges.
The affidavit states that on October 11, 2025, a federal court authorized a search warrant for Tellis’s residence in Vienna, Virginia, the same day he was scheduled to depart for planned international travel to Rome, Italy.
The affidavit also documents several meetings Tellis had with Chinese government officials between September 2022 and September 2025, raising questions about potential information compromise.
In one instance, on September 15, 2022, surveillance allegedly observed Tellis entering the restaurant with a manila envelope and departing without it, while the PRC officials entered with a gift bag. In another instance, on September 2, 2025, the PRC officials reportedly handed Tellis a red gift bag near the end of the dinner.
The conversations at these dinners, according to the affidavit, touched on sensitive topics like Iranian-Chinese relations, emerging technologies (AI), and US-Pakistan relations, all areas of expertise for Tellis.
The charges against Tellis stunned members of the strategic affairs community, many of whom have had constructive engagements with a well-regarded scholar even when they have disagreed with him. Some analysts even went so far as to argue that meeting Chinese officials, as the justice department affidavit alleged, was par for course in the strategic thinkers community.
“My good friend Ashley Tellis may have been careless with classified documents (though less than the current US president) but meeting with Chinese officials is part of his f**cking job,” Bruno Tertrais, a scholar with the French thinktank FRS, wrote on X.
In the thinktank circuit, the broad consensus was Tellis may have erred in handling classified information, but calling him a Chinese spy – which the affidavit implies but does not say directly – would be a stretch. If anything, he had long been advising Washington and New Delhi that they need to work together to deal with a rising China.
Mishandling classified or top secret documents is an old and familiar story in Washington DC. Among those accused of it more recently: Joe Biden, and before him, Donald Trump .
After he demitted office in 2020, then former President Trump was charged in a federal criminal case with willful retention of national defense information and other charges related to storing classified documents at his Mar-a-Lago residence.
Biden’s own personal attorneys discovered classified documents from his time as Vice President at the Penn Biden Center for Diplomacy and Global Engagement and his private residence in Wilmington, Delaware. Former vice-president Mike Pence was also accused of taking away classified documents.
While they were unscathed because of the privilege of high office, others like former national security advisor Sandy Berger and CIA chief general David Petraeus, had to face consequences.
After he was accused of intentionally concealing and removing a classified report detailing the Clinton administration's internal assessments of the unsuccessful 2000 millennium attack plots, Berger pled guilty in 2005 to one count of unauthorized removal and retention of classified material. He was fined $50,000 and sentenced to two years of probation with 100 hours of community service. His security clearance was revoked for three years and he was later disbarred from practicing law.
In another case, former US general David Petraeus was charged with providing eight binders of classified material, which he called his "black books," to Paula Broadwell, who was writing his biography, All In: The Education of General David Petraeus, and with whom he was allegedly in a relationship. The fallout from the affair and subsequent FBI investigation led to his resignation as CIA Director in November 2012. He was later sentenced to two years of probation and ordered to pay a $100,000 fine.
In yet another case, former assistant secretary of state Robin Raphel was also accused of being in possession of classified documents that should not have been removed from the state department. The counterintelligence investigation was reportedly triggered after US investigators intercepted a conversation where a Pakistani official claimed their government was receiving US secrets from a prominent former state department diplomat. Raphel refused a plea deal for mishandling classified documents and the case was later dropped.
While none of these cases resulted in proven charges of espionage, social media lynchmobs, including hypernationalists in India and in the US, had a field day jumping to conclusions about Tellis, ostensibly based on his writings.
Two recent pieces by Tellis in Foreign Affairs magazine offended India partisans: A May 2023 piece headlined “America’s Bad Bet on India” that explained why New Delhi would not side with Washington against Beijing, a common-enough discussion in think-tank circles.
In a more recent piece, provocatively headlined “India’s Great Power Delusions,” Tellis argued that India overestimates its influence on the world stage while lacking the economic heft, military capacity, and alliances to back its great-power ambitions. He warned that India’s attachment to strategic autonomy and multipolarity risks making the country irrelevant in an era of intensifying bipolarity, when the competition between China and the United States will shape geopolitics.
Neither piece appeared to suggest even remotely that he was shilling, much less spying, for China.
After alluding to possible exchanges of manila envelops and red gift bag, the FBI concluded its affidavit saying it "establishes probable cause in support of a criminal complaint charging Ashley Tellis with the unlawful retention of national defense information."
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