Dove battles "the dark agenda"

Shaini Goodwin says those who question her word risk the loss of their prosperity. She swears that those who deny the existence of the secret law NESARA are lying. She claims those who debunk her claims are tools of the CIA and other powerful forces. Still, her following is growing.

The News Tribune/July 19, 2004
By Sean Robinson

It's not easy keeping secrets. Sometimes Shaini Goodwin, aka "Dove of Oneness," wishes she didn't know so many.

Life would be simpler.

She wouldn't have to flood the Internet with reports that draw thousands of readers around the world. She wouldn't have to write about a secret law called NESARA - the National Economic Security and Reformation Act.

Sometimes, she says, she wishes she'd never heard of NESARA. She claims Congress secretly passed it in 2000. The supposed law forgives mortgage and credit card debt, abolishes the IRS and declares peace - but she says a U.S. Supreme Court gag order prevents anyone from revealing it, under pain of death.

Goodwin says the gag order doesn't apply to her, because she isn't an "official person." Her self-appointed mission - revealing the truth about NESARA - forces her to write reports from her mobile home in Shelton, explaining that the Bush administration plotted the 9/11 attacks and the East Coast sniper slayings to prevent NESARA's announcement.

The knowledge is a heavy burden. Without it, she wouldn't have to fend off critics who scoff at her claims, call her the leader of a cybercult and charge that she links NESARA to the wealth promised by a financial scam. She wouldn't have to call for demonstrations around the world, or ask her 15,000 readers for donations, sent to a mail drop in an Olympia strip mall.

It's a price she's willing to pay for the peace she says NESARA will bring.

"NESARA is the most important thing on the planet," she says.

Goodwin claims a powerful group called "White Knights" is fighting a secret war against "the Illuminati" over the secret law. Her regular updates cite secret sources from the highest levels of government and finance around the world.

She links her conspiracy theory to a proven con. Goodwin says NESARA will unlock the wealth allegedly held in more than 50 "prosperity programs." They include an investment fraud called Omega, run by a convicted con artist named Clyde Hood of Mattoon, Ill. In the mid-1990s the scheme robbed thousands of people of more than $20 million and led to the convictions of 18 conspirators for wire fraud, mail fraud and money laundering.

Followers throughout the world believe Goodwin's reports, subscribe to her Internet "e-group" and wave banners for her cause. They ignore government officials who tell them there is no secret law to announce, that Congress never passed it, that there is no gag order.

Goodwin dismisses critics and naysayers as tools of what she calls "the dark agenda." The Omega convictions were a sham, she says - a government plot to deprive people of their money. She says she is practicing political activism, that she tells the truth, that she doesn't lead a cult.

Her followers don't know she has registered a business to make collection of donations easier, that she has declared bankruptcy at least once, or that she owes the IRS $12,000. Most don't even know her name, or that she's a 57-year-old former parade queen from McCleary.

The Scheherazade factor

Goodwin didn't make the pieces of her Byzantine puzzle.

Omega came from Hood, a retired Illinois electrician who created the investment fraud scheme in 1994. New Age jargon provided Goodwin's rhetoric. The conspiracy theories were rusty boilerplate, covered by "The Da Vinci Code" author Dan Brown and others, volleyed around thousands of Internet sites. And the NESARA idea belonged to Harvey Barnard, a retired engineer in Louisiana who drafted a model bill 13 years ago as an academic exercise.

But the synthesis was Dove's, and that's what catches the trained eye of Andreas Schroeder, co-chairman of the creative writing department at the University of British Columbia, and author of several books on scam artists and confidence games.

Dove built a bridge from one scam to another, shifting from Omega's unofficial chronicler to the keeper of the secret law. Schroeder likens the NESARA story to a famous con from the 1920s: the Drake Legacy.

For more than a decade, Oscar Hartzell, an Illinois farmer, convinced thousands of people that he controlled the $100 billion estate of Sir Francis Drake, the 16th-century pirate.

Hartzell went to London to make the con look good. He stayed there, sending letters to suckers back home that described his negotiations with the British government and the royal family, and the need for more public support and money to seal the deal.

He spent his days at the post office and his nights on liquor and women. He was convicted of fraud in 1934 and died nine years later. Before his trial, Hartzell's believers raised more than $68,000 for his defense.

His method was as old as deceit. Richard Rayner, author of "Drake's Fortune," a book on the scam, calls it "the Scheherazade factor," invoking the princess of the Arabian Nights who saved her life with stories.

Like Hartzell, Dove writes letters describing government plots too tangled to unravel. Like him, she denounces critics and skeptics. Like him, she urges her supporters to campaign for the unreal.

It keeps them distracted, Schroeder says. The best con artists turn passive victims into active supporters.

"You're told to spend a tremendous amount of effort to get in on the fight and defend yourself," he says. "Join up with a bunch of other like-minded people to defend the enterprise. It keeps you busy, it keeps you involved, and because you're chorusing, the din you create overwhelms anything that might be coming in through the other ear."

Misinformation

On Nov. 29, 2001, Dove instructed victims of the Omega scam not to file restitution claims seeking the return of their money.

"Since the whole court thing in Illinois was always part of the dark agenda opposition trying to brainwash program members, if you fill out that questionnaire, you are probably signing away your rights to your prosperity," she wrote.

In the same message she mentioned another Internet poster, Jennifer Lee, a California woman who adopted Dove's methods but lacked her panache. Lee's messages, also available on the Internet, are delivered by phone and quote liberally from Dove's writings. Lee frequently asks her readers to send money - "donations" - to pay for her expenses.

In her Nov. 29 message, Dove endorsed Lee's requests for donations, but distanced herself from such pleas.

"My own policy is to do my service of providing truth WITHOUT asking the Dove e-group members to donate money to help me," she wrote. Her e-group subscriber list climbed above 5,000.

Collectively, 355 Omega victims from 41 states and three countries filed restitution claims seeking more than $1.69 million.

Esteban "Steve" Sanchez, the assistant U.S. attorney in Illinois who prosecuted the Omega case, was disappointed. He knew the scam's victims numbered in the thousands.

It was the Scheherazade factor, the unshakable faith of Omega investors, the rough magic of the con, nurtured by Dove. The victims weren't talking - not in Illinois, and not in Yelm, where Goodwin then lived. Many Omega "investors" were clustered in the Thurston County city and surrounding communities.

Dove was hindering the restitution effort; it was a pain, but Sanchez and his attorneys chose not to chase her. They already had 19 criminal cases to prosecute.

"The misinformation was more of a thorn in our sides, as opposed to an evidentiary, crime-solving thing," he said. "We couldn't figure out that she was taking any money. She was just misinforming people. That may be an issue of the First Amendment. She's not forcing the listeners to believe what she says. These people are adults."

Louise Gilman, then a Yelm resident, invested $4,500 in Omega. She knew several others in the community who gave as much or more. As soon as she heard of the court case and the restitution program, she filed a claim. She knew others in Yelm who didn't.

"So many people did not put in for a refund," said Gilman, who now lives in Oregon. "They thought the government was trying to get in on it. We didn't know anybody who went in for restitutions. There's so many lessons to be learned for people here - the truth really needs to be told. I have to say that the government protected us."

On Dec. 23, 2001, Dove posted a report shredding Barnard, the original author of the NESARA bill. His Web site was a sham, she said. Bush administration goons had taken control of it. Her opponents, including Barnard, were "dark agenda stooges."

Eventually Dove would change the name of the secret law, but preserve Barnard's acronym. Instead of the National Economic Stabilization and Recovery Act, it became the National Economic Security and Reformation Act.

Barnard had written the NESARA proposal, nursed it for years and inched it toward the door of respectability, even getting an occasional sniff from politicians with a libertarian bent.

Now the idea no longer belonged to him.

He has taken to calling Goodwin's reports "Dove droppings."

Back in business

On Jan. 24, 2002, Shaini Goodwin got her business license. The corporate address appeared in her Internet reports, and she began to ask for donations to cover her expenses, which ranged from an overdue electric bill to replacement of a dying computer.

She says it was the hardest thing she's ever done. She had been writing reports for two years and never asked for money, but there was no alternative.

If she didn't, she says, "I probably would have to get a regular job, and I wouldn't be able to help NESARA."

She would repeat her request once every three to four months for the next two years. Only a few readers respond, she says - about 100 out of more than 15,000.

Goodwin has never mentioned the business license to her readers. She told The News Tribune she doesn't see the need.

"The Dove business is strictly to have a bank account," Goodwin says. "That's the only reason that it's there. I had to get a business license to open a checking account with the name of 'Dove.'"

In subsequent 2002 reports, she urged readers to send e-mails to Congress, demanding the announcement of NESARA. She claimed the Bush administration planned the 9/11 attacks to prevent it. Her subscriber list topped the 6,000 mark.

On April 11, she started a phone line: a Seattle number where supporters could call for "updates." The NESARA announcement was imminent, "on the brink," and the White Knights were taking new steps to eradicate the dark agenda. She claimed 7,600 subscribers.

"Oh, by the way," snorts Jay Adkisson, a scam-cracking asset protection attorney from California, "we're having trouble paying our phone bill - please send some money in."

Adkisson edits Quatloos.com, an irreverent Web site dedicated to exposing financial scams and frauds. (The word "quatloos" is a pop-culture joke, a reference to sci-fi currency from an old "Star Trek" episode.) Adkisson appears as an occasional guest expert on network news shows such as ABC's "20/20," and he has testified on investment fraud before the U.S. Senate Finance Committee.

The Quatloos site includes a lengthy history of the Omega scam and excerpts from Dove's reports. Adkisson scoffs at them ("the voice of the clinically insane," he says), but his words include a hint of grudging admiration.

"A very subtle scam: Keep me alive for information because this information impacts you," he says. "Well, the fact is, it doesn't impact anybody. It's bogus. It's just a way to grift money from people who want to believe that their long-forgotten Omega shares are gonna pay out some day."

Dove calls Quatloos "a CIA disinformation Web site" and says she has confirmed it with a Secret Service agent she won't name.

Along with Adkisson, Dove attracted other observers - hunters who make a hobby of researching scams. One goes by the Internet handle "goose." He followed Omega for years and had friends who invested in it. When Dove's reports began to appear, he kept an eye on her.

"I give her credit for being able to combine this stuff in an amazingly confusing way," he says. "Dove has pulled some really hurtful things together and built a story, which she continues to spread, and which, in turn, only causes more hurt for those who hang on to her every word.

"People have been completely ruined because of these programs that Dove promotes," the man known as goose says. "Dove has had ample opportunity to see the hurt people have suffered. Does she stop? Never. She goes on and on."

In June 2002, Goodwin asked for donations again.

"My PC needs some expensive repair work done in the NEXT FEW DAYS so I can keep doing the Dove Reports, and due to unforeseen expenses in our household, I need your assistance with these repair costs," she wrote.

She complained that the NESARA announcement had been delayed until July 4 and chided the White Knights for taking so long. She urged supporters to send e-mails to the World Court in the Netherlands, where she claimed judges were assembling for secret hearings on the NESARA issue.

She swept critics aside, announcing that those who spoke against the secret law were being "monitored" and would forfeit their prosperity. In August, she said homemaking empress Martha Stewart, under suspicion for financial crimes, was being framed because she supported NESARA.

On Oct. 1, she asked for money again. On Oct. 2, she advised a supporter facing mortgage foreclosure to call the bank, inform whomever answered that NESARA was being announced and explain that banks that continued to pursue foreclosures would be charged with obstruction of justice.

On Oct. 15, two weeks after the East Coast sniper shootings ended with the arrest of former Tacoma resident John Allen Muhammad, Dove's daily report called the slayings a dark agenda operation carried out by federal agents.

"I'm told that some of the reported shootings and deaths are NOT true, but that local police officials and others have been willing stooges to help out in this CIA operation," she wrote.

Her claimed subscriptions rose: 8,000, then 9,000, then 10,000.

The numbers are impossible to verify; the Internet is a graveyard of unreliable statistics, easily rigged and twisted. But her news group at the Yahoo Web site, which she has since abandoned, listed similar membership numbers before she moved her reports to a new site. She showed her e-mail inbox to The News Tribune during an interview Thursday. It included 1,763 new (or unread) messages.

Whatever her true number of readers, her fame was growing. Her reports began to appear on multiple "mirror" Web sites, including the Internet home of the Principality of Camside in Australia, a "fake nation" created by a handful of anti-government secessionists who say the Australian government is illegal.

Dove started giving radio interviews. They included a two-day guest appearance in February 2003 with Cameron Steele, host of a Seattle-based program called "Contact Radio." Steele invited Dove after receiving requests to bring her on, he said. Her appearance drew record interest: More than 100 people signed up for the show's e-mail list after the interview.

"She makes good radio," he said.

During the interview, Steele didn't ask about Omega, though he heard rumors of Dove's ties to the old scam.

That wasn't the topic of the show, he told The News Tribune. The topic was NESARA. Steele isn't sure he buys the business about passage of the secret law, but he thinks it's quite an idea.

"Maybe this whole thing with Dove is there just to define what we want with our lives," he said. "To remind us we need to investigate more."

Dove's appearance on Steele's show was sponsored by Stephen Heuer, a California business owner who sells natural goods and organic products. When he bought the airtime, Heuer knew nothing about Omega or Dove's connection to it. He had spoken with her after hearing about NESARA from an acquaintance. The conversation left him spellbound.

"I just found that what she said was so compelling and so positive and so much what we needed, that if there was anything I could do to support its coming to fruition, I would do that," he said. "I'd like to think it's a Santa Claus story come true."

Too good to be true

Though soliciting donations in exchange for phony information might sound fishy, it isn't illegal. State and federal law enforcement authorities say no law prohibits Dove from asking for gifts, even if they fund conspiracy theories.

"She has her First Amendment right to say things," said Jeff Scobba, an investigator with the U.S. Postal Service in Seattle. "As long as she's saying it's a gift or a donation to her cause, I don't think there's anything illegal with asking for money.

"I think it would be foolish to send her money."

Dove hasn't generated any complaints to the state attorney general or the U.S. Attorney's Office in Seattle. No public sources show how much money she makes from her state-registered business, or whether she pays obligatory taxes. The state Department of Revenue does not disclose such information about individual businesses, said spokesman Mike Gowrylow, who added he hadn't heard of Dove before The News Tribune asked about her.

"If we become aware of any kind of suspected tax evasion, we investigate it," he said. "I'm sure we don't catch every little bit of it, and we're not aware of everything."

In early 2003, Dove orchestrated a letter-writing campaign to the U.S. Supreme Court, urging her fans to send postcards ("NESARA now!") and NESARA fliers, which readers could download for free.

Her followers responded dutifully. Hundreds of postcards arrived. No one paid much attention.

"If correspondence doesn't relate to a specific court case or require a response, it's disposed of," said Kathy Arberg, spokeswoman for the court.

No proof

On her Web site, Dove describes several ways to prove NESARA's reality. None can be verified, though she says public denials simply prove how secret it is.

In some of her reports, she claims Congress passed the bill March 9, 2000, and that President Clinton signed it on Sept. 10 of that year. Records of congressional actions for March 9 show no NESARA vote. Records of Clinton's official actions Sept. 10 don't include a NESARA bill-signing.

Goodwin now says Clinton signed the bill sometime in October 2000.

Repeated questions from NESARA believers have forced the Department of the Treasury to issue a statement on its Web site, couched in inoffensive but direct terms.

"The NESARA proposal has not yet been introduced in the Congress, nor is it part of any current law," the statement reads. "The Treasury Department is not authorized, under our political system of checks and balances, to execute or administer any part of NESARA, without the force of law as approved by Congress."

Dove claims some financial experts know about NESARA and will discuss it if asked.

Matt Philichi, an investment broker with the Tacoma branch of Morgan Stanley, burst out laughing when he heard the story of the secret law.

"That's the silliest thing I've ever heard of," he said. "There's absolutely no way that all this information is going to float out of Yelm, Washington, and miss all the other cities in the world. It sounds like the typical scam. If there was something in this that we could present to our clients to help them and make them like us more - you know we'd be all over it. There's not one firm out there that would keep it a secret."

Occasionally, Dove names U.S. Rep. Ron Paul (R-Texas) as a NESARA supporter. Paul's libertarian views on the economy make him "a bit of a lightning rod for conspiracy theorists," says his spokesman, Jeff Deist.

Deist says the same thing to every NESARA supporter who calls: NESARA has never been introduced in Congress, and Paul never voted on it.

Dove says members of the national media are under a gag order, and cannot discuss the secret NESARA law. She says she learned about the gag order from "a New York journalist." She will not give his name.

When pressed for other evidence by The News Tribune, Dove cited "confirmations" of NESARA in the form of messages from her supporters.

She provided 95 pages of printed e-mails. Many of the messages were duplicated three and four times from the same individual. The pile included 18 messages referencing NESARA. In them, supporters speak of colored currency and vague hints from unnamed bank tellers and managers. Most of the anecdotes describe conversations with friends of friends.

At Dove's request, one of her supporters, Dan Onerheim of Iowa, spoke to The News Tribune and described the experience he called a "confirmation."

"A few months back," Onerheim said, he was talking to a certified public accountant who mentioned "a lot of changes coming into effect monetarily." He said the man mentioned NESARA.

The News Tribune asked for the man's name. "Al," Onerheim said.

The last name? He didn't know.

The man's location?

"I think he was out of Phoenix," Onerheim said.

A second supporter, Herb McKirgan of Oregon, told The News Tribune he heard U.S. Rep. Dennis Kucinich (D-Ohio) confirm NESARA's existence during a recent speech.

McKirgan said he mentioned NESARA activities to Kucinich, who allegedly named the law and said it was "very important."

Andy Juniewicz, senior communications adviser to Kucinich's presidential campaign, dismissed the story and criticized Dove's occasional use of Kucinich's name.

"Her claim is pure fiction," he said. The congressman would not have corroborated the existence of a law that doesn't exist. It's important that she stop using his name as corroboration for her claims."

During her interview with The News Tribune on Thursday, Dove called another supporter, this time in the Netherlands, a woman named Nel DeBest who participates in NESARA demonstrations at the World Court. DeBest also reported a "confirmation" of the secret law - she says an ambassador driving by the demonstrators in a car gave the thumbs-up sign. So did one of the World Court judges, she said.

At times in the last two years, hundreds of daily e-mails from NESARA followers have gummed up the World Court's computers. Local police recently told the demonstrators to stop planting their signs in the flower beds.

The activists are peaceful, friendly and persistent, says Boris Heim, one of the court's information officers.

"We have just told them we have nothing to do with them and can't help them in any way," he says. "You see obviously that they don't have quite a grip really on what's happening. They look at you in a bizarre way. They're not listening."

Heim feels sorry for them. It amazes him that they believe Dove's words.

"It's just pointless," he says. "It's like asking the president of France to abolish the death penalty in New Zealand. It doesn't make any sense. If you talk about this to any normal human being with a functioning brain, he will understand that the International Court cannot erase the taxes of the world."

Court employees used to respond to NESARA e-mails with a form letter: "The International Court of Justice (ICJ) has nothing to do with any alleged 'Nesara' proceedings, as mentioned in your e-mail and on certain Internet sites," it said. They don't bother to respond anymore. It does no good.

 

Edith Cole, a 69-year-old Rochester, Thurston County, resident, waved a NESARA banner at the World Court when she visited the Netherlands earlier this year. In February, she passed out NESARA fliers at a Puyallup gun show.

Cole doesn't send Dove money, but she reads her reports regularly. She didn't invest in Omega and says she doesn't know about Dove's connection to it.

"I'm under the impression that she's a caregiver, that she does humanitarian work," Cole said. "I've talked to Dove directly. She's very passionate for what she's doing. She totally believes in it. I do, too."

A rush from influence

Photos of the World Court demonstrations appear on Dove's Web site, along with others of NESARA demonstrations in Seattle, Texas and South America. The numbers are growing, and Dove feeds the energy. Recently, she gave herself a new title: Worldwide NESARA Take Action Team Director.

Though her means are modest, Dove's influence and worldwide network of supporters reflect an occasional pattern that surfaces in "impostor" scams - and provide a partial explanation of what Goodwin gains by her efforts.

"It's definitely not always money," says Schroeder, the fraud historian. "Beyond a certain point, it's the ability to influence a whole lot of people at the snap of their fingers. Influence, being the spider at the center of the web that can get everybody excited by plucking this string. That's as big a rush and as good a reason as making a million bucks."

The scam hunter known as goose can't decide whether Dove writes for money or attention, whether she believes her reports or puts on a good show. Either way, it bothers him.

"A lot of people have newsletters, and people either pay for them or their newsletters are supported by donations. There's really nothing illegal about that," he says. "But the thing is, Omega has been declared, by the court and in Illinois, a scam. You can't talk about funding without connecting it to something that's been called a scam, something that's been declared illegal by the courts. In that sense you're holding out hope of a declared scam. There's the legal question and then there's the moral, ethical question."

Hearing the story of Dove, Sanchez, who prosecuted the Omega conspirators in Illinois, feels a pulse of fury.

"It is so offensive to me when people victimize victims, kick somebody when they're down," he says. "This is what she's done, and it's not right. One could argue that she's done more damage than Clyde Hood."

The cybercult

In Redmond lives a man who wishes he'd never heard of Dove. Because of her reports, he can't talk to his sister anymore. Fearing he will lose all contact with her, the man asked The News Tribune not to publish his name. Call him John.

John's sister lives in California. Her husband controls all communication to their household. The husband was an Omega investor who tried to pull his relatives into the program. Now the husband is a Dove believer.

"He's an incredible supporter, to the point where if you mention that it might not be on the up-and-up, he gets angered," John says. "It doesn't matter what you say - these people want to believe. They want to believe what's being fed to them."

He has tried to talk to the husband, to reason with him. It doesn't work. They can't talk anymore; the husband says John is part of the dark agenda. What started as a dubious get-rich-quick scheme has become something else, something addictive.

"There is definitely a walking path between multilevel marketing and this stuff - a doorway drug," John says. "This is really a cult. It's a cybercult."

The News Tribune reached John's brother-in-law last month and asked whether he would talk about his support of Omega and NESARA.

"Take my number off your list and forget you ever met me," the man said, and hung up.

"This goofy NESARA stuff, it is a cybercult," said Adkisson, the scam-busting California attorney. "You've got a big pool of proven suckers - a big pool of people who were dumb enough to buy into these prosperity programs in the first place. There's a really bizarre, extremist political strain through this whole deal. You have to wonder, what's the end game?"

The trucks

Through winter and spring of this year, Dove trimmed NESARA like a Christmas tree. The secret law would bring even more benefits, she said: a cure for cancer, 90 percent price reductions at the store, increased Social Security payments ($3,000 a month), a ban on Navy sonar tests that kill whales, and prosecution for uninsured drivers.

She asked for money on Feb. 4. Petitions to the World Court were working, she said in March. Judges had agreed to hold a hearing on the NESARA announcement, now scheduled for April.

On April Fool's Day, at the end of a long report, she pushed for another postcard campaign to a familiar target: The Joint Chiefs of Staff at the Pentagon. To fire up the troops, she added a teaser:

"I'm working on another BIG action which will encourage these high-level officers to get NESARA announced immediately," she wrote.

For the next few days, she dropped hints about "the secret BIG thing," calling it "a very unusual activity which will give NESARA's announcement a BIG boost forward."

On April 7, the big thing arrived. Four billboard trucks appeared in Washington, D.C., and drove around Capitol Hill for a few weeks. The signs they carried called for the announcement of NESARA. The chrome-style logo and graphics were taken from Dove's Web site.

In a report posted April 7, Dove cheered. Photos of the trucks soon appeared on her site.

"At last, OUR VOICES are being heard in D.C. in a BIG way," she wrote. "It makes me smile every time I see these beautiful NESARA mobile billboards."

She told The News Tribune the trucks were paid for by a woman - "a well-to-do NESARA supporter" she would not identify.

A Maryland-based company called Drive-By Ads owns the billboard trucks. Owner James Miller said he didn't know anything about NESARA when the job came in. It was just another campaign. A big one, though; he had to call in extra drivers. Each truck rents for $600 per day, and vinyl signs run between $1,200 and $1,400 apiece.

The trucks ran for three weeks. Miller won't say who paid for them.

"Sometimes I'm leery on calls I get for the NESARA group," he said. "Some people are for it, and some people are against it. I'm just the messenger."

On April 22, a few days after the trucks appeared, Dove posted her latest request for donations.

"Next week I must pay for some large communications expenses and other expenses and I'm asking those of you who are able to send financial contributions to fund the many actions I'm leading for the benefit of all of us to move NESARA into announcement immediately," she wrote.

She gave the Olympia address and mailbox number along with the usual precise instructions: "Please address your envelope EXACTLY as above or your envelope may not be delivered. Also, please REPLY to this message telling me you are sending me a financial gift. You may make checks or money orders payable to 'Dove.'"

Epilogue

Next year, the Elma High School class of 1965 holds its 40th reunion. Organizer Karen Olson, who still lives in her hometown, doesn't know whether Goodwin will come; she didn't show up for any of the others.

Sharon Van Leeuwen, another graduate who lives in Olympia, is going. She's looking forward to seeing old friends. She didn't know Goodwin well, but she remembers her.

"She was very kind," Van Leeuwen said. "I thought she was beautiful. I wished that I looked like her. Kind of a leader, well-liked, good-natured and very friendly.

"She didn't listen to gossip."

Sidebar: The Secret Law According to Dove

Despite facts to the contrary, Dove of Oneness insists Congress passed a secret law in 2000. Here's what her Web site says the secret NESARA law does:

"Forgives credit card, mortgage and other bank debt.

"Abolishes the IRS, creates a flat-rate sales tax.

"Initiates the U.S. Treasury Bank System, which absorbs the Federal Reserve and new precious metals backed U.S. Treasury currency.

"Restores constitutional law.

"Requires resignations of current administration to be replaced by NESARA president and vice president designates until new elections within 120 days.

"Requires the president designate to declare "peace," enabling international banking improvements to proceed; ends "U.S. aggressive military actions immediately, and many more improvements."

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