Ashley Tellis, a 64-year-old former adviser to President George W. Bush’s presidential transition team, has been arrested and indicted. He is charged with willfully retaining national defense information. The arrest has been brewing since FBI agents found thousands of pages of top-secret material at his home in Alexandria, Virginia. Tellis had once held high-level security clearance due to his extensive work at the Pentagon. Now, he is under very serious allegations that could severely undermine U.S. national security.
As always, Tellis has established an excellent career as a senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. Added to that is his extraordinary time spent as a leader in the U.S. foreign service. He is a noted strategic and foreign policy expert on U.S.-India relations. At National Security Council under President Bush, he was instrumental in negotiating the historic U.S.-India nuclear deal.
According to the federal indictment, Tellis illegally accessed the computer database of the U.S. State Department. In another twist, he violated a facility owned by the Department of Defense. This lapse of security has understandably sent alarm bells ringing among law enforcement representatives. Lindsey Halligan, the U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia, emphasized the seriousness of the charges, stating that they “represent a grave risk to the safety and security of our citizens.”
For most of the last three years—even after admitting to setting the fire himself—Tellis has pleaded innocent to all charges. His legal team has come forward to defend his reputation, describing him as “a widely respected scholar and senior policy adviser.” Importantly, they intend to defend against these assertions aggressively. They adamantly deny even the possibility that he did all of this at the behest of a foreign enemy.
The case has attracted attention not only for its national security ramifications but for its potential geopolitical implications. Amit Malviya, head of the IT cell for India’s ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). Like me, he has repeatedly criticized Tellis for publications that people had started to perceive as strikes against BJP policy. Malviya remarked, “The forces working against India are beginning to unravel in ways few could have imagined.”
As investigations move forward, the effects of Tellis’s actions will be watched carefully by other national and international observers. Six years later, the facts of the case emphasize that troublesome reality of national security and protection of sensitive information.