Indian-American national security expert and long-time United States adviser Ashley Tellis was on Saturday arrested and charged with illegally removing classified files from a government facility, CNN reported.

Tellis, who serves as a consultant with the US State Department, was taken into custody after investigators found more than a thousand documents with classified markings at his home in Virginia. He had and his family were reportedly slated to fly to Rome on the day of the search.

Classified material was also found in three trash bags during a search conducted by the Federal Bureau of Investigation over the weekend, the South China Morning Post reported.

Tellis, a naturalised US citizen who was born in India, is a senior fellow at US-based think tank Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.

According to court records, some of the documents allegedly accessed and removed by Tellis pertain to Air Force tactics and techniques, CNN reported.

A Federal Bureau of Investigation affidavit made public on Tuesday stated that Tellis met multiple times with Chinese government officials over the past several years.

It was not immediately clear from the affidavit what information, if any, Tellis allegedly may have shared with Chinese officials.

Court filings said that in recent weeks, sureillance footage captured Tellis accessing and printing classified material, and removing it from government facilities, the South China Morning Post reported.

He was also allegedly seen hiding papers inside notepads and putting them in his briefcase before leaving the Pentagon’s Mark Center in Virginia.

Investigators alleged that on September 25, Tellis opened a classified 1,288-page US Air Force manual marked as “Secret”, according to the South China Morning Post. He allegedly renamed the file “Econ Reform” so as to disguise it, printed hundreds of pages and then deleted the document.

Tellis was among the key negotiators of the Indo-US civil nuclear deal that was signed in 2008. He had served on the US National Security Council during the tenure of former President George W Bush.

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