re: If the intelligence community led by the CIA is not the “deep state,” what is?

I know we all laugh at the Q stuff, but one of the most interesting things to me was that whoever or whatever Q was tried to paint a picture of NSA as the good guys and that Snowden was some sort of CIA plant meant to dirty up the NSA.

There has been speculation Strzok was CIA's plant in the FBI.

Where is gets really complicated is the contracting out -- I'm guessing Ray Epps was some type of privatized CIA operator.