A prominent foreign affairs analyst and senior State Department adviser was arrested over the weekend and charged with illegally storing sensitive government records after federal agents found more than 1,000 pages of secret documents at his home, the Justice Department said Tuesday.
Ashley Tellis, 64, an unpaid adviser who also works as a contractor in the Pentagon’s Office of Net Assessment as an expert on Indian and South Asian affairs, was charged after F.B.I. agents searched his home in Vienna, Va., on Oct. 11, the Justice Department said.
Agents discovered more than 1,000 pages of documents marked “Top Secret” or “Secret” in two locked cabinets, a desk and three large trash bags in an unfinished storage room in the basement, according to an F.B.I. affidavit.
Mr. Tellis was charged in federal court with the unlawful retention of national defense information, according to a criminal complaint filed in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia. He appeared in court on Tuesday and was ordered detained pending a hearing on Oct. 21, according to court records.
A lawyer for Mr. Tellis did not respond to a request for comment. The Justice Department also did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Mr. Tellis was accused of printing, or directing colleagues to print, classified documents over the past month on topics that included U.S. military aircraft capabilities, according to the affidavit. Some of the documents were removed from a Sensitive Compartmented Information Facility, or SCIF, a secure area used for handling classified materials at the Defense Department’s Office of Net Assessment, according to the affidavit.
Surveillance footage showed Mr. Tellis leaving several federal buildings, including a State Department office, carrying a briefcase that investigators believe contained the printed materials, according to court filings.
Mr. Tellis is a senior fellow and the Tata Chair for Strategic Affairs at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, which has not commented on his arrest. A scholar specializing in Indian and South Asian affairs, he previously served on the National Security Council staff as special assistant to President George W. Bush.
“The charges as alleged in this case represent a grave risk to the safety and security of our citizens,” Lindsey Halligan, the U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia, said in a statement.
The arrest came amid upheaval inside Ms. Halligan’s office, one of the nation’s most closely watched federal prosecutor’s offices, which in recent weeks has secured indictments against two adversaries of President Trump, the former F.B.I. director James B. Comey and New York’s attorney general, Letitia James.
The office’s previous chief prosecutor, Erik S. Siebert, resigned under pressure from the White House after Mr. Trump grew dissatisfied with Mr. Siebert’s failure to secure indictments against Mr. Comey and Ms. James. Mr. Trump appointed Ms. Halligan, a former White House adviser with no prior prosecutorial experience, as Mr. Siebert’s replacement.
The office has faced a wave of firings and resignations, and in recent weeks senior prosecutors have been dismissed, including Michael P. Ben’Ary, the veteran head of the office’s national security section who spent years pursuing major terrorism cases. In a letter, Mr. Ben’Ary accused the department of focusing more on the president’s political opponents than on national security threats.
Mark Walker is an investigative reporter for The Times focused on transportation. He is based in Washington.
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