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A Chevy Chase Village resident and former federal research scientist was arrested on Monday by the FBI on charges of attempted espionage.

Stewart David Nozette, 52, of the 100 block of Grafton Street, has a preliminary hearing scheduled for Oct. 29 at the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia on charges that he attempted to pass classified information related to national defense and U.S. space research to an undercover officer with the FBI whom he believed to be an intelligence officer for Israel, according to a criminal complaint filed by the FBI in court on Friday. He is currently being detained until the Oct. 29 hearing date.

If convicted, Nozette faces a maximum sentence of life in prison. A call to his attorney in Washington, D.C., Paul Kiyonaga, had not been returned as of press time.

Nozette worked at the National Space Council in the Executive Office of the President at the White House from 1989 to 1990, and in the Advanced Concepts Group at the U.S. Department of Energy's Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in the District from 1990 to 1999.

He also performed research on behalf of the U.S. Naval Research Laboratory in the District; the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency in Arlington, Va., which aims to maintain technological superiority of the U.S. military; and the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, according to the FBI criminal complaint. He founded the Alliance for Competitive Technology non-profit corporation in 1990 and did some of his government work through ACT.

He had top secret security clearances to classified government material from 1989 through 2006.

The complaint stated that on Jan. 6 of this year, Nozette flew from Dulles International Airport to a foreign country not identified in the FBI's criminal complaint with two computer "thumb" drives. When he returned to the United States on Jan. 28, U.S. Customs and Border Patrol could not locate these drives during a search of Nozette's possessions. Prior to this trip, Nozette told an unnamed colleague that if the U.S. government tried to incarcerate him for any crime, he would move to Israel or another foreign country and "tell them everything" he knew, according to the FBI complaint.

On Sept. 3, Nozette was contacted by an undercover FBI officer posing as an officer for Mossad, the Israeli intelligence agency, and Nozette agreed to meet with the officer the same day at a hotel on Connecticut Avenue in Washington, D.C., according to the criminal complaint.

At that meeting, Nozette informed the undercover FBI officer that he had access to classified information, including "nuclear clearances" and other top secret information requiring a security clearance, according to the criminal complaint.

Although Nozette said he no longer had legal access to classified information, he indicated in a Sept. 4 meeting with the FBI that he remembered the information.

On Sept. 10, the FBI left a letter in a post office box in the District with a detailed list of questions for Nozette about U.S. satellite information and $2,000 in cash. Nozette retrieved the list and the money the same day, and on Sept. 16 left a manila envelope in the same post office box containing a document answering the questions posed by the FBI, as well as a computer "thumb" drive.

This "dead drop" routine was repeated on Sept. 17, when the FBI once again left a list of questions for Nozette in a post office box, this time accompanied by with $9,000 in cash. On Oct. 1, Nozette again left a list of answers pertaining to satellites, as well as early warning systems and means of defense or retaliation following a large-scale attack.

In the criminal complaint, the FBI recorded Nozette telling the undercover officer that he was willing to be a continuing "asset" for Mossad. Nozette said that his parents were Jewish and that he was interested in obtaining an Israeli passport, to have another "base of operations."

He also told the undercover FBI officer he expected to be contacted by Mossad at some point.

"I knew you guys would show up," Nozette told the undercover officer at the Sept. 3 hotel meeting.

Nozette worked as a consultant for an aerospace company owned by the Israeli government from 1998 to 2008, and indicated to the FBI that he believed this company to be "just a front." Because of this, Nozette told the undercover officer, he said he "thought I was working for you already."

Describing his interest in receiving cash for the information he provided, Nozette told the undercover FBI officer on Sept. 4 that he knew "how to handle cash ... you buy consumables ... cash is good for anything ... you eat it, drink it or screw it."