For decades, U.S. intelligence agencies have routinely shared critical information with the covert operations organizations of such allied countries as the United Kingdom, Israel, Germany and other NATO powers. However, these “old-line” powers do not possess the deep resources of human intelligence (“humintel”) required for understanding the new Middle East, U.S. State Department analyst Lazlo Toth told Fox News Reporters yesterday. “What is more, many of those countries have agendas that are in fact at odds with the development of new, fragile democratic movements in the Middle East. The old European powers, the Israelis, none of them have a vital agenda in the emergence of popular-driven government. In fact, some of them are actively opposed to it. So we realized that we needed to find new friends in the region. And now we have found them.”

Toth explained that U.S. intelligence agencies have for the past 12 months been working with new security partners: the Egypt-based Muslim Brotherhood. “This once-controversial group, which long ago renounced the use of force, has an incredibly far-ranging web of connections,” Toth said. “Their assets extend through every Middle Eastern country, a number of nations in Asia, and even extend to a network of campus student organizations in the U.S. They have so much to offer us, now that we have won their trust,” Toth said. “It took time for us to convince some of the ‘Old Guard’ inside our intel agencies that we have no long-term quarrel with the Brothers,” Toth told Fox reporters. “But this administration has been unrelenting about this, making a number of transfers and forced retirements in order to clear away irrational opposition to our new approach.”

The Muslim Brotherhood shares America’s concern with human rights, democratic governance, and the need for values-based political activism, Toth said. “We just needed to strongly motivate some of our senior staff in order to make them see it.”