...now director of communications for Nike USA, did not return phone calls and declined to answer written questions.

While a number of gubernatorial staff members heard detailed information about Goldschmidt's secret either while he was in office or shortly afterwards, the two staffers closest to Goldschmidt say they never heard a word. Tom Imeson, who was Goldschmidt's chief of staff and went on to become his business partner, says he never heard about the sexual abuse until just before the story broke in May.

Ruth Ann Dodson, the woman who for more than two decades served as Goldschmidt's confidante and gatekeeper, also says she knew nothing, although she acknowledges taking a number of phone calls from Susan when Goldschmidt was governor.

Leonhardt wasn't done talking. As The Oregonian reported in June of this year, Leonhardt says he told Ted Kulongoski about Goldschmidt's secret repeatedly during the early 1990s, including when Kulongoski was state attorney general.

Gov. Kulongoski denied Leonhardt's claim, which was potentially damaging both because of Kulongoski's long association with Goldschmidt and because the governor appointed Goldschmidt to the State Board of Higher Education last year, long after Leonhardt says Kulongoski knew of Goldschmidt's secret.

Last week, Leonhardt offered further information that could be embarrassing to the Kulongoski administration, telling WW that in early 2001 he briefed Steve Schneider, now Kulongoski's senior political advisor, about Goldschmidt's secret.

Leonhardt says he told Schneider at John Barleycorns brewpub in Tigard when they met to discuss Kulongoski's impending candidacy. Schneider was "shocked," Leonhardt says, and reacted with "intense curiosity."

If Leonhardt is telling the truth, either Schneider withheld the information from his boss or Kulongoski tapped Goldschmidt to fix the state's ailing university system knowing he had a giant skeleton in his closet.

Schneider recalls meeting Leonhardt but says the discussion did not include Goldschmidt's secret. "He did not have a conversation with me about this," Schneider maintains.

Given what is now known, it's easy to see why Goldschmidt didn't seek a second term for governor. After he'd kept his secret for more than a decade, events began to unravel. In late 1988, he arranged for Susan--who was trying to contact him regularly and speaking with increasing indiscretion about him--to get job in Seattle. In that city, she suffered a brutal rape and told authorities about her earlier sexual abuse at the hands of a "trusted family friend," who was 21 years her senior--creating the first public document in which she referred to Goldschmidt's crime.

On Feb. 7, 1990, Goldschmidt stunned Oregonians and political pundits across the country when he announced he would not seek a second term as governor.

The man whom The Washington Post had singled out just two years earlier as the "best of the breed" of governors was abandoning a brilliant political career just shy of his 50th birthday.

Goldschmidt cited his pending divorce as the reason for quitting. At least one prominent Democratic activist, Win McCormack, knew better.

Win McCormack says although he believed the story he heard about Goldschmidt and an underage girl, he never told anybody else about it.

Currently the publisher of the literary quarterly Tin House, McCormack has a lengthy journalistic background. In the '60s, he co-founded the San Francisco magazine Mother Jones, which built its reputation on investigative journalism. After moving to Portland in 1976, McCormack published the well-respected Oregon Magazine (which closed in 1988), as well as Oregon Business magazine, where he remains a board member.

In addition, McCormack has long been a large contributor to statewide and national campaigns. In October, for example, he gave what the Oregon Follow the Money Project says is the biggest single political contribution in the state's history: $1 million to America Coming Together, a Democratic get-out-the-vote operation.

McCormack told WW he learned of Goldschmidt's secret not long after the governor's surprise announcement in 1990. "The brother of a friend of mine was dating [Susan] when Goldschmidt said he wasn't going to run again," recalls McCormack. "He said, 'Let me tell you the real reason he isn't running.'"

With his journalistic experience, McCormack knew what a huge story he had been handed. Still, he chose to do nothing. "I didn't feel like it was my business, and even though I don't like Neil, I didn't want to destroy him," McCormack says.

McCormack says he never shared the secret, even though Goldschmidt's surprise decision remained perhaps the greatest mystery in Oregon politics over the past 15 years.

Last winter, several months before the story about Goldschmidt became public, McCormack attended a party at the home of real-estate investor and Democratic Party activist Terry Bean.

McCormack found himself in a conversation with a number of people, including former Gov. Barbara Roberts.

The conversation turned to Goldschmidt, as has so often been the case across the state for the past 30 years. Why, Bean wondered, had he never run for a second term as governor?

McCormack said he knew but would not tell. According to McCormack and another person