OState.com: Did you ever get the impression that people were starting to figure out that you were the Mole?

Bill McDaniel: "No. The only person that ever picked up on me was Bribs and it was sort of arbitrary. We had only been there about a week and he decided he'd put me down as the Mole and he answered 8 of the 10 questions on the second quiz with my answers. Then he made a fatal mistake. He teamed up with Darwin. And Darwin said, 'You were incredibly lucky. You should have been executed. Get off of Bill. He's not the Mole. I know he's not' and Bribs believed him. From that point on, even though I felt phenomenally paranoid, nobody put me down. I know because the producers told me, nobody put me down as their suspect on their quizzes until Katie got executed when Heather started putting me down as her primary suspect. Until that point, I went the entire time without anyone suspecting me at all."

OS: Do you think you were change anyone's mind when they started to suspect you?

BM: "No, because nobody suspected me. There were several times that I made a slip when talking to folks that I covered very rapidly that under ordinary circumstances, they would have picked up. But because they didn't think I was the Mole anyway, they just passed on it. The night of 'Burn Bags Burn' I made a statement to Myra about something I knew because the producers told me and she picked up instantly and said, "How do you know that?". I'm sitting here in the bus at 2:00 in the morning, with the lights out luckily because I turned beat red. And about that time, one of the den mothers, the people that helped us around, hopped up and said 'Ok listen up about tomorrow's schedule' and she repeated what I just said. So Myra just assumed I heard it earlier and forgot about it. Then another time, Al following a quiz, asked me, 'How did you answer this' and I said 'I answered it this way' before it dawned on me I answered it that way because I was the Mole. And for a split second, I said 'I just told him I answered for myself.' And then I said, "Oh no. I can't believe I put my information down on there." And he said, 'I've almost done that several times myself' and he just passed it. Be had no suspicion at all. I think the only person I got actively executed was Lisa. And that was because she read my journal I made up the night before. But I didn't have to go out of my way to get anyone off my case. My problem was no matter what I did they didn't believe me. They just wouldn't believe I was the Mole. I could do anything and they'd say, 'He's too old or he's pretending.'"

OS: When it came time to take the tests, did you really take them?

BM: "Absolutely. In all honesty, I reviewed every quiz. I reviewed all the questions and answers before they gave them. After the interviews on the days of the quizzes, they'd turn off the mikes off on all of us and say, 'Ok. Is there anything you need to say totally off mike, off camera, just you and the producers. In that case, when I would do this, they'd say, 'Here's the games going on tomorrow. And here are the questions, look them over.' Several times I would say 'No, that question is no good because the information is conflicting with what I told.'"

OS: So you really have to keep a sharp mind?

BM: "Well, the fact is, the biographical data is biographical data. Remember when you were born, what kind of car you drive, what college you went to. The other stuff they ask, like where did you sit, in all honesty, some of that I didn't remember. One of the questions was, "When you were in Rome, in what order did the Mole get off the bus?" I sat there looking at them and said 'You've got to be kidding me. I don't any idea what order I got off the bus.' There were only about 3 people on the set that knew I was on Mole. The producer would call over to the other producer and ask what order I got off the bus. Another great question, 'In the card game in Anderson's Fun House, they asked what was the point total of the cards the Mole received that night.' I had no idea so they had to tell me what the answer was."

OS: Do you think those kind of questions are unfair?

BM: "No. Not at all. It is a game of observation. We all observed incredibly detailed things. We all had our books and journals out, we wrote down what people had to eat, what color wine they had, what they had for desert. We wrote down where they sat. Part of the game is observation. I think those are totally fair questions. It takes someone incredibly sharp to stay in the game and win it."

OS: Who were your favorite players?

BM: "My favorite players were Dorothy and Heather. They played by far the best game. They both truly entered it in the right spirit. They knew they had to create doubt in people's minds. They had to screw up some, they had to pretend to be the Mole, they had to make people think they were. As far as people that I really liked and enjoyed, Bribs, the kid from Texas A&M. Phenomenally sharp. Phenomenally well grounded. Al. Al has a similar background as me. He has four sisters. We became close friends. Darwin is a good guy. I really like Rob. Unfortunately I'm going down the whole list because I like them all. Amongst the girls, Myra. She's an Air Force Major, was in Desert Storm, in the medical field, is an airline pilot. So Myra and I became close friends. I really Elavia, Dorothy and Heather."

OS: Do you still keep in contact with them?

BM: "We come in so close of contact you wouldn't believe it. I bet today I have had 30-40 emails from them and them from me. I'll give you a little scoop, right now we are in the process of planning a book. We are going to do a book with all 14 of us contributing. It's going to be insights to the Mole. I don't know what we're going to call it. What it's going to be, we all get the same questions. 'Tell us how you got on the show. Tell us why you think you got picked. Tell us all the stuff that happened behind the scenes that never got shown.' So what we're doing is writing a book to tell all that stuff. We need to get it cleared through ABC. I'm hoping we'll have it on the shelves by Thanksgiving."

OS: Was speaking forgeign languages a requirement to be on the show?

BM: "No, it wasn't a requirement. They put those down like I speak them fluently. I lived in Spain for 3 years and I'm pretty good with street Spanish. I lived in Japan for 3 years and while I was there, I took Japanese courses. I became conversant enough to get around the country fine. I can talk to people very limited. Right now, if I tried hard, I could come up with 50 words. When I was at Oklahoma State, I took German for 4 semesters. At one point, I think I was totally fluent. I'm not fluent now. I lived in Germany in 1979 and within a month, I was fluent again. So it's hiding there. My foreign languages are spotty, but they weren't a requirement."

OS: How helpful were the languages during the show?

BM: "Of some help, especially in Switzerland. Myra and I both spoke German, nobody else did. When we were trying to get around and ask directions, there were several times it was a significant help. We were getting ready to get off the train going across Switzerland to get to the hotel. We had to be there by 6:00 or we didn't get the $20,000. I went up and found the train conductor and I asked him in German how to get to the hotel and he told us. None of us spoke Italian unfortunately. Even though Spanish and Italian are very similar, trust me on this, you cannot make a pizza speaking Spanish."

OS: When the show was being shown on TV, did you watch it?

BM: "Oh of course. Not only did I watch it, I had a party every single night it was on. A big party. I was in Oklahoma for episodes 8 and 9. Had a big party in Tulsa, ABC stations came out and covered it. Had a big party in Blackwell on episode 9. Got back here to Washington where I had about 100-125 people for the last 2 shows. We had big parties."

OS: Were any of the people aware you were the Mole?

BM: "No. Actually, in the very last episode there were 3 people that showed up and told me confidentially they had heard from friends on the East coast that I was the Mole. (The show had shown earlier on the East coast than the West coast.) I always got up and gave a little talk before the show. I got up and said there were some people in the audience that know the outcome of the show, but please be aware that if you reveal the outcome the time honored Navy tradition of keel-hulling will take place."

OS: Did you see anything you could have done differently, or did you even watch for things like that?

BM: "I didn't see anything I would have done differently. I was pretty much given free reign on how I sabotaged games. When it dawned on me that people simply weren't picking up I got more and more obvious and they still wouldn't pick up. If I had to do again and they were more suspicious I would have been more circumspect."

"I had a lot of folks ask me why I gave away $100,000 in the last game instead of reading the dossier. I had the producers ask me that because I gave away $100,000 of their money. I told them I did it for three reasons. One, I had just hiked 6 and a half hours, about 11 miles, through briars and brambles, down steep mountains, jumping ditches, through wild dogs, tore up my favorite OSU polo shirt and I'll be dammed if I did all of that just to open a dossier that I had all the information in. That was a lousy reward for a wonderful day. I loved the day. Two, I thought Heather and Dorothy, hands down, were the best players in the game and they deserved the money. And most important, I am always the Mole. I knew people watching this would be wavering back and forth between the three of us. I gave that $100,000 back in the pot just to throw one last doubt in their minds. The Mole certainly wouldn't give away $100,000. I was told by many, many people it worked. They decided then it must be Dorothy or Heather. In all honesty I wouldn't do anything differently. I liked what I did."

The Mole (Part Two)