Inside a windowless room in the Pentagon’s Mark Center, the cameras see everything.At 10:18 am, October 10, 2025, a bespectacled man sits alone in a cubicle, surrounded by files stamped “Top Secret.”He lifts the cover of a notepad, slides a few pages of a PowerPoint marked with the Air Force seal between its sheets, straightens the edges, glances over his shoulder, and slips the pad into his leather briefcase. Then he walks out.
According to an FBI affidavit filed in the Eastern District Court of Virginia, that man is Ashley Tellis, a veteran US policy adviser and one of Washington’s best-known India experts.
Serving as an unpaid senior adviser for the US Department of State, he also works as a contractor at the Office of Net Assessment (ONA) within the Department of Defense, now referred to as the Department of War. The ONA functions as an internal Pentagon think-tank.
Because of his appointment to these sensitive roles, Tellis had top security clearances required to access sensitive government information.A scholar, whose words once shaped the US–India nuclear accord, is accused of quietly collecting America’s classified military secrets.
The case, as laid out in court papers, centres on the unlawful retention of national defence information under Section 793 (e) of the Espionage Act.Tellis, 64, was arrested at his Virginia home after federal agents found more than a thousand pages of material labelled Secret and Top Secret in filing cabinets and, most strikingly, in three black trash bags stored in his basement, court filings show.He has denied the charges, and his lawyers insist that “any insinuation of operating on behalf of a foreign adversary” is false.
The affidavit describes a pattern that prosecutors say points to intent.
Previous attempts 
On a previous occasion (September 25, 2025), investigators claim Tellis logged into the State Department’s Classnet system and opened a 1,288-page US Air Force document on adversary fighter tactics.He renamed the file “Econ Reform,” printed select portions – including pages 59 to 398 and 943 to 959 – and then deleted it.That same night, he allegedly printed two more Secret files on aircraft capabilities, the FBI affidavit states.
Two weeks later came the moment in the secure facility: the notepad, the papers, the furtive glance.When agents searched his Vienna home, they say they found those printouts among other classified records.
The timing added intrigue: the search took place hours before Tellis and his family were scheduled to board a flight to Rome, with a return via Milan as per the court filings seen by TRT World.Prosecutors have not accused him of fleeing, but the coincidence colours the narrative: a basement of hidden files, luggage waiting upstairs.
Tellis’s career has long straddled Washington and New Delhi.Born in Mumbai, educated at St Xavier’s College, he became one of the earliest Indian-born strategists to rise inside the US foreign-policy establishment.He served as special assistant to President George W. Bush, helped negotiate the landmark US–India civil nuclear deal, and later held the Tata Chair for Strategic Affairs at the Carnegie Endowment.His scholarship often praised closer defence and technological ties between US and India, while warning that New Delhi’s ambitions outpaced its capabilities.
Tellis authored several books like Grasping Greatness: Making India a Leading Power (2022), some of which argued for status quo on disputed Kashmir, scepticism of Pakistan, and Delhi’s steady partnership with Washington.
 
Now, that same architect of strategic trust faces accusations of betraying it.
The affidavit goes further, tracing his dinners with Chinese government officials over several years – in restaurants across suburban Virginia, gift bags changing hands, talk of artificial intelligence and US–Pakistan relations.It does not claim he passed secrets, only that he met and conversed, details that, taken with the classified papers, form a portrait of proximity that investigators found troubling.Tellis’s lawyers call such meetings “routine for an academic engaged in diplomacy and research.”
For decades, Tellis’s work gave intellectual scaffolding to US–India engagement.He wrote of India’s need to modernise its economy, of a multipolar world where Delhi could act without subservience to either Washington or Beijing.His colleagues describe him as precise, discreet, and loyal to both nations’ democratic ideals.
Yet the images in the affidavit linger: the renamed file, the notepad folded over a Top Secret page, the trash bags in the basement.All of it now evidence in a courtroom, all of it still unproven.
Tellis remains on administrative leave from Carnegie, awaiting trial.
‘Grave risk’
In legal filings, the government speaks of “a grave risk to the safety and security of our citizens.”
A State Department official confirmed Tellis’s arrest on Saturday. The Pentagon said it would not comment on a case that remains before the court.
Tellis appeared in court for the first time on Tuesday. US media reported that a detention hearing is set for October 21.
If found guilty, Tellis could be staring down a decade behind bars and a $250,000 fine, the US District Attorney for Eastern Virginia warned. Meanwhile, his defence speaks of decades of service and the presumption of innocence.
 
Between those two claims lies the question that will decide his fate: Was Ashley Tellis a scholar who mishandled secrets for convenience, or someone who knew exactly what he was doing when he wrote “Econ Reform” on a file that could never be shown to anyone at all — as the FBI special agent concluded that the sworn statement, “establishes probable cause that Ashley Tellis unlawfully retained.
___
Source: TRT