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Ashley J. Tellis, an Indian-born senior fellow and Tata Chair for Strategic Affairs at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace in Washington, D.C. as well as a former staffer on the White House National Security Council under President George W. Bush, has been arrested on federal charges of “unlawful retention of national defence information” after a raid on his home this last weekend by the FBI uncovered thousands of highly-sensitive pages labeled both TOP SECRET and SECRET, including documents on tactics, techniques and procedures by the U.S. Air Force.
According to an affidavit filed in the Eastern District of Virginia, Tellis held a Top Secret Security Slearance with access to “Sensitive Compartmented Information (SCI)” through his work as an unpaid senior adviser at the U.S. State Department and as a contractor with the Department of Defence's Office of Net Assessment. During the search of his home, classified documents that Tellis had printed himself or had co-workers print, before smuggling them home in briefcases, were found in filing cabinets, on a desk and inside trash bags in the basement of home in Washington.
The affidavit states that Tellis removed documents from classified spaces on multiple occasions, including an incident on September 25, during which Tellis accessed the State Department's “Classnet” Network, which handles information at a Secret Classification. While in the network, he opened a PDF file “that referred to U.S. Air Force tactics, techniques and procedures”, originally titled with a reference to adversary fighter aircraft and marked ‘Secret’. He then “re-saved the document, changing the file name to ‘Econ Reform’”, before printing sections of it in batches. He then opened and printed two additional U.S. Air Force Weapons School documents “concerning military aircraft capabilities,” both marked Secret.
In addition, the affidavit further claims that since 2022, Tellis met at least four times with government officials of the People's Republic of China, including a dinner in September 2022 in Fairfax, Virginia, where Tellis arrived “with a manila envelope” and Chinese officials “entered the restaurant with a gift bag.” During another dinner in April 2023, Tellis and the officials “were overheard talking about Iranian-Chinese relations and emerging technologies, including artificial intelligence”.
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