Ashley Tellis, 64, a U.S. citizen from Vienna, Virginia, was arrested on Oct. 11 for the alleged unlawful retention of classified national defense information and appeared in the Eastern District of Virginia for a detention hearing. Prosecutors allege that Tellis—a senior advisor at the State Department, a contractor with the Department of Defense’s Office of Net Assessment, and a Senior Fellow at the Carnegie Endowment—removed and stored over 1,000 pages of documents marked SECRET and TOP SECRET at his home, including in locked cabinets and trash bags. According to court filings, Tellis held a Top Secret/SCI clearance and allegedly accessed materials from secured systems and a SCIF, at times altering filenames, printing portions, and concealing documents in a briefcase. The FBI, with assistance from Air Force OSI and the State Department’s Diplomatic Security Service, is investigating. The Justice Department emphasizes that a criminal complaint is merely an allegation and Tellis is presumed innocent until proven guilty. Sources: U.S. Department of Justice.
Sources: U.S. Department of Justice . Midtown Tribune News