The year’s best political watchdog: No one gets under Washington’s skin quite like him.

The pulitzer prize–winning journalist’s latest book, about the war effort, marks the end of a trilogy that goes deep inside the heavily guarded inner workings of the Bush administration and takes a laser-sharp look at how government really works.

MJ: The subtitle of Way of the World is “A Story of Truth and Hope.” Where do you see the hope coming from?

RS: Well, the broader idea of the book is that as the startling and de-spiriting disclosures about official power come to light, they can also serve as a starting point for the era’s central question: how to rebuild trust in America and restore moral energy.

How do you get former CIA hands to view what they do in such terms, and then build the kind of trust that lets them talk to you comfortably in the first place?

Years ago, when I began reporting about characters I didn’t understand or identify with immediately, I realized I had to do a better job of understanding their perspective. I needed to give up my knowingness, my certainty. Eventually I came to my “good enough reasons” rule: that people do what they do for good enough reasons. They may not be my reasons, but they’re good enough.

But how does this trust work the other way? Spooks are, after all, practiced in the art of deception.

I embrace a model of humility, and a belief that [my subject] should know as much about me as I do about them. Over time they understand that you actually believe in the good-enough-reasons rule, and you want to understand why they’ve done what they’ve done. It works with any subject and places them beyond swift judgment.

In your 2004 book, The Price of Loyalty, you talked to the first Bush Treasury secretary, Paul O’Neill. Have you discussed the current economic crisis with him?

Yes, we’re in touch. The thing that’s struck both of us is that you have to engineer many of the same things here that you do to revive the moral energy we’ve lost in the war on terror. It’s about transparency and accountability. In both cases you have to get people past the point of feeling helpless before the big forces unsettling their lives.