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If Stewart Nozette is put behind bars for espionage, his life may also get put under glass.

The Chevy Chase Village resident arrested Oct. 19 on charges of attempted espionage has caught the attention of Thomas Boghardt, the sole historian at the International Spy Museum in Washington, D.C. Boghardt, a Bethesda resident, has a global knowledge of espionage activities — but he isn't such an international man of mystery that he overlooks his own neighborhood.

"It's not wholly surprising that once in a while, someone in espionage comes from Bethesda, Chevy Chase," Boghardt said.

Indeed, spies may choose to live in Montgomery County for the same reasons Boghardt moved to Bethesda two years ago: good schools for their children and proximity to the nation's capital. Boghardt, 39, grew up in Hamburg, Germany, and got hooked on espionage by reading the spy novels of masters like Frederick Forsyth and John le Carré.

He said he doesn't get many questions about how his German background dovetails with his work at a spy museum in the United States, noting that the museum is, after all, an international endeavor.

"I think, if anything, it's an asset," he said.

The history of espionage in the county could be more extensive than those shocked by Nozette's arrest believe. It dates back to the Civil War and is particularly notable during the Cold War, when the National Institutes of Health, $2,000 in gold and a Rockville hotel were involved in separate incidents and allegations, according to Boghardt.

One of the most famous incidents involved John Walker Jr., a communications officer in the U.S. Navy who sold classified secrets to the Soviet Union for 17 years. He involved both his brother Arthur and his son Michael in what became known as the "family spy ring." Ironically enough, it was his wife Barbara who reportedly phoned the FBI in 1984 and tipped them off that her husband was a spy.

Walker was finally arrested by the FBI at a Ramada hotel in Rockville in 1985, following a "dead drop" gone wrong in Poolesville, where he left information for Soviet agents. He was sentenced to life in prison.

Yevgeny Barmyantsev, a Soviet intelligence officer, was also on the wrong end of a dead drop in 1983 when he was caught by the FBI in Montgomery County trying to pick up what he thought was classified military information. He and two other Soviet diplomats were kicked out of the United States.

A Soviet spy who managed to elude domestic counter-espionage efforts in the county was Yuri Shvets, who felt so proud of his accomplishments with cloaks and daggers that he wrote about them — but only after the Cold War ended.

His 1995 memoir, "Washington Station," describes meeting a female journalist he called "Phyllis Barber" at her Bethesda home, along with another man Shvets called "Martin Snow," who according to Shvets raved against the Ronald Reagan administration, described the U.S. as "a Roman Empire on the verge of collapse" and was considered by Shvets to be a potential intelligence asset.

"Martin clearly is dying for an admiring audience," Shvets wrote on page 64 of his book of his thoughts during the Bethesda meeting. "But, considering his views, there is little chance he will find it in America. So you'll become his audience, and he will be in your debt."

"Phyllis Barber" was in fact Claudia Wright, a Washington correspondent for the British publication the New Statesman who used information provided by the KGB in her story. It is unclear, however, if Wright knew definitively that she was working with the KGB. "Martin Snow" has never been positively identified.

"There definitely was an intelligence connection there," Boghardt said.

Soviet propaganda also managed to reach NIH's Bethesda campus. The KGB disseminated information that Robert Gallo, credited with co-discovering the AIDS virus in 1984 in an NIH lab, actually invented the virus himself. Ft. Detrick in Frederick was identified by Soviet sources as the site where AIDS was created.

And the three sons of Robert Hanssen, a former FBI agent now imprisoned for espionage activities related to Russia, attended the Heights School in Potomac.

A recent local case that echoes Nozette's alleged crimes involved Keith Weissman, one of two employees of the pro-Israel lobbying group American Israel Public Affairs Committee indicted in 2005 for conspiring to give U.S. national defense information to journalists and employees of the Israeli embassy. But the charges against Weissman and his co-defendant Steven Rosen were dropped earlier this year.

Weissman was reportedly a Bethesda resident, while Rosen was reported to be living in Silver Spring.

One local spy could look upon her country of choice from across the Potomac River. Rose O'Neal Greenhow, one of the most famous spies working for the Confederacy during the Civil War, may have been born in Montgomery County, although some accounts have her being born in Port Tobacco.

Like Shvets, she published a memoir about her espionage work. The book sold well — but perhaps too well for her own good. When she was returning from Europe to the United States in 1864, her ship was chased aground by a Union ship. Reportedly, Greenhow took $2,000 in gold into her lifeboat, which may have capsized the boat and caused Greenhow to drown.

Finally, Boghardt said in the 2005 movie "Syriana," CIA agent Bob Barnes, played by George Clooney, breaks into a Washington attorney's home that is supposedly located in Chevy Chase.

"It's a reflection to me of a role that a place like Chevy Chase can play," Boghardt said.