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If you've been following US politics (and who hasn't been over the past few months) you may have come across the term "deep state".
The idea is that unelected members of America's security agencies (the intelligence community or IC) and bureaucracy are secretly pulling the strings of government.
And according to Washington Post political reporter Robert Costa, it's an idea that has become popular within the Trump camp:
Some of the President's political enemies have also alluded to the existence of a deep state, including influential neoconservative Bill Kristol:
The question is whether the conspiracy is real or just an unsubstantiated theory.
Where does the term 'deep state' come from?
The Oxford Dictionary says the term was first used in reference to Turkey.
And there was good reason to believe a deep state really did exist there.
While it's not fully understood what the Turkish deep state was and how it operated, King's College London lecturer Simon Waldman says people were given a glimpse of it in the aftermath of a car crash in 1996.
The bodies of a senior police official, a former leader of a ultra-nationalist paramilitary group and a hit woman were found in the wreckage, while the lone survivor was a state-supported Kurdish warlord.
As Dr Waldman wrote for The Conversation:
"The question on everyone's lips was, no doubt: 'What were these people doing together?'"
However, he says it's likely Turkey's deep state apparatus was dissolved or became inactive after this scandal.
Many also believe a deep state exists in Egypt and this can be seen in the vast power wielded by its military, which has produced many of that country's leaders and which was also responsible for the 2013 coup.
Why do people think there's a deep state in America?
Breitbart News is one media organisation that's giving a voice to what it calls "deep state-gate".
If that name sounds familiar to you, it's probably because Breitbart is the far-right website where Steve Bannon was executive chairman before he became Donald Trump's chief strategist.
Breitbart commentators point to the leaks of national security information to the media in order to damage the White House as evidence.
The resignation of national security adviser Mike Flynn was the "first great success" of this campaign of destabilisation, according to "several intelligence insiders" who were cited in an article published in February under the headline "Insiders: Obama Holdover 'Shadow Government' Plotting to Undermine Trump".
The idea that government officials are working against the White House, and that Barack Obama is encouraging this, has gathered pace since then.
LA attorney Robert Barnes told Breitbart News Daily on March 3:
"This is an effective de facto coup attempt by elements of the deep state."
Last week, Breitbart's senior editor-at-large Joel B Pollak laid out conservative radio host Mark Levin's case that a "silent coup" was taking place.
The article claimed the Obama administration ordered surveillance on Mr Trump prior to the election:
In summary: the Obama administration sought, and eventually obtained, authorisation to eavesdrop on the Trump campaign; continued monitoring the Trump team even when no evidence of wrongdoing was found; then relaxed the NSA rules to allow evidence to be shared widely within the government, virtually ensuring that the information, including the conversations of private citizens, would be leaked to the media.
Soon after Levin made his claims, Mr Trump himself stated as fact that Mr Obama wiretapped Trump Tower during the election campaign.
The White House has also called for a congressional investigation into whether the Obama administration abused its investigative powers in 2016.
However, the claims regarding surveillance by the Obama administration remain unverified and unsubstantiated.
Is there anything in the idea of a deep state?
Nicole Hemmer, an academic at the University of Virginia and the University of Sydney's US Studies Centre, says the use of the phrase "deep state" has been more rhetorical than descriptive:
"Are there ways people within the intelligence community and federal bureaucracy are trying to slow down the Trump administration? Sure. Is that some shadowy government that secretly runs the country? Not at all."
She says the idea of there being a "shadow government" suggests a level of autonomy, secrecy and coordination that doesn't exist.
But that's not to say a deep state like those found in Turkey and Egypt couldn't exist in America.
"The current threat to American democracy resides in the Oval Office, not a deep state," Ms Hemmer said.
"One could imagine a scenario where the executive grows so out of control that the intelligence community and bureaucracy more fully moves against him and takes the reins of power, but there would have to be a much deeper crisis in democracy for that to happen."
And even then, Ms Hemmer argues "the longer history of American democratic institutions, coupled with the relative weakness of the US federal government, comes into play here, as does the fact that there is a significant portion of the intelligence community and bureaucracy that are fine with Trump".
Meanwhile, it's not just Trump supporters who have talked about there being a deep state.
A recent article in the London Review of Books referred to "the dangerous fantasy" among liberals that "the deep state might rescue us" from the Trump presidency.
Ms Hemmer says these people should be careful what they wish for if they're hoping the deep state will remove Mr Trump from power or otherwise thwart his agenda.
"It would be a disturbing state of affairs if FBI influence (via Jim Comey's letter in the closing weeks of the campaign) helped swing the election toward Trump, and then members of the intelligence community helped bring down the Trump administration," she said.
"That's not democracy — it's something much more troubling."
Topics: world-politics, donald-trump, united-states