Is the CIA plotting against President Donald Trump? A handful of observers think so — and some of them are even cheering it on.

Neoconservative publisher of the Weekly Standard William Kristol tweeted in February that while he “strongly” prefers “normal democratic and constitutional politics,” he would “prefer the deep state to the Trump state.”

Trump, you’ll remember, gave a speech at CIA headquarters the day after his inauguration, admitting that it was meant to address claims that he and the agency didn’t get along.

A series of leaked stories since then have undermined the administration, particularly in regards to its relationship with Russia and Russian intelligence services, leaks that seem to have come from CIA sources.

Trump’s politics should not be a problem for this vanguard of U.S. imperialism. Few of them, however, can tolerate Trump’s possible collaborations with hostile governments, and their actions to date suggest that they have something concrete on him.

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One emerging hypothesis — Russian intelligence colluded with the Trump campaign to use hacked information to undermine Hillary Clinton’s already tenuous credibility and then the Russian government gave Trump a well-disguised 19-percent stake in its state oil company — worth $11 billion — in return for an end to sanctions against Russia and the weakening or dismantling of NATO.

If this has happened and the CIA knows about it, they have substantial motivation for action against this state, but how will we know? How would CIA go about overthrowing a U.S. president, and what signs would we be able to see as it went down?

The best way to answer this question is to look at some of the major coups the CIA has supported throughout its history. A plot against Trump would be a very different undertaking, and no two overthrows have been alike to date. There are, however, some significant commonalities among the major coups backed or attempted by the CIA.