US implicated in Bolivia military operation to ‘detain or kill’ Evo Morales

Bolivia’s ex-president, longstanding socialist indigenous leader, Evo Morales, has claimed that the US military sought to “detain or kill” him in a joint military operation.

Morales originally shared the allegations without supporting evidence. However, journalist Ollie Vargas has since confirmed the accusations with credible evidence from leaked policing documents. The leaked files pertain to ‘Operation Tambaquí Lightning’ involving more than 2,300 troops.

The documents outline operational orders from the sub-commander general of Bolivia’s national police force, ex-army general, Juan Román Peña. Then-incoming president, Rodrigo Paz, supported by hawkish US security state figures like Marco Rubio, appointed Peña in November 2025.

Paz’s US-aligned administration is currently confronting popular mass mobilisations, and an indefinite general strike against his perceived neoliberal policies and policy alignment with foreign extractivists’ interests.

In this fraught context, Vargas wrote:

Patriotic factions within the police & military have kept us informed of all plans & movements. That’s how we got the documents confirming the joint operation with US armed forces to arrest Evo Morales.

Bolivia face interference from US

The first document outlines 2,340 police and military troops, alongside 164 vehicles and a further 82 motorbikes, deployed to Cochabamba province. For reference, the CIA-led Bay of Pigs invasion into Cuba in 1963 comprised approximately 1,400-1,500 militants.

Over half of these deployments are mobilised from provinces other than Cochabamba, indicating a full-scale operation to seize Evo Morales. The ex-president draws his strongest popular support in Cochabamba, where a significant portion of the population remain fiercely loyal to him. Morales is based there since leaving office.

However, what is most striking about the document, is the US-denominated Administration for Drug Control DEA – US (row 9 on the table). Although there are no DEA or US agents marked as being involved in operational deployment, it is significant that the DEA is involved.

The DEA typically operates with regional partners under the pretences, at least, of counter-narcotics. In this instance, it joins Bolivia’s national intelligence directorate (40 deployments, row 6) and Special Forces for the Fight Against Crime (50 deployments, row 5) and Against Narcotics (150 deployments, row 7).

Also involved, but not directly deployed, are Bolivia’s armed forces. However, some 3,500 soldiers have been separately deployed to capital city La Paz to quash the ongoing popular mobilisations.

DEA espionage, regime change and hypocrisy

The DEA open-secretly collaborates with US and international security state partners — particularly the US National Security Agency — to spy on both US and non-US citizens across foreign countries.

The DEA is centrally implicated in recent regime change efforts in Venezuela, despite the country’s relatively minute drug trafficking activity and the fabrication of entire fake ‘cartels’ by the US security state. Despite Trumped-up drug charges, it’s clear that the CIA sought a foothold in post-Maduro Venezuela.

Recent presidential pardons of high-profile convicted drug traffickers, such as Honduran ex-president Juan Orlando Hernández, suggest clear bias in how the US selectively deploys narcotics laws. Trump likely pardoned Hernández to interfere in the 2025 presidential elections, alongside Mossad.

Likewise, continued US collaboration with the Ecuadorian presidential Noboa oligarch family, which stands credibly accused of drug trafficking, demonstrates how selectively the US weaponises these operations.

These various instances make clear that the DEA, far from merely being concerned with drug trafficking operations, serves selectively as a weaponised tool of US foreign policy interests, especially to its south.

Welcoming back the DEA to Bolivia was one of Rodrigo Paz’s first decisions when he entered office in November 2025. Morales’ socialist (MAS) government had expelled the DEA from Bolivia in 2008.

The DEA is further implicated in point C.4 of an additional document leaked to Vargas (see here).

‘Operation Tambaquí Lightning’ and US extradition

Further files leaked to Vargas shine light on details of the Cochabamba Tropic-based operation to detain Morales, who is identified by his full name for capture.

The Canary has translated relevant sections from Spanish.

One file explicitly orders an “interception, security, and extraction” in Chapare, Cochabamba. The Canary must clarify, however, that there is no evidence yet to suggest that a ‘kill order’ was green-lighted.

The same document, under ‘MISIÓN’, indicates that a Maduro-style US extradition of Morales is its plan.

THESE OPERATIONS HAVE THE PURPOSE OF COMPLYING WITH THE ARREST WARRANTS AND THE EXTRADITION ORDER AGAINST CITIZEN JUAN EVO MORALES AYMA AND OTHER COLLABORATORS, GUARANTEEING THE RULE OF LAW, THE PHYSICAL INTEGRITY OF PERSONNEL AND THIRD PARTIES, AND THE UNRESTRICTED RESPECT FOR HUMAN RIGHTS AND CONSTITUTIONAL GUARANTEES OF THE RESIDENTS AND INHABITANTS OF THE REGION.

Although the US is not named on this page, there is no other state actor that regularly issues extradition orders across the South American continent. This would suggest that US extradition is part of planning in the region.

On 11 May, UPI reported that Rodrigo Paz’s administration is seeking legal advice from the US:

The government of President Rodrigo Paz announced Tuesday it would seek information from U.S. judicial authorities to investigate Morales’ alleged links to drug trafficking networks. Bolivian authorities are seeking to participate as a “victim” in ongoing U.S. legal proceedings to gain access to evidence.

Charges against Morales: lawfare?

These recent drug allegations follow a string of further allegations levied against Morales. He was found in contempt of court for a no-show following his arrest warrant on human trafficking charges.

Morales has faced multiple charges relating to sexual relationships with girls under 16 in his time in office, which must be investigated properly.

Morales and his legal team state that the charges are politically motivated, although Morales himself is not entirely innocent of engaging in lawfare. He previously battled in court with former ally and former president of Bolivia, Luis Arce, who was himself arrested shortly after Paz came to power in late 2025.

The Canary understands that the Bolivian legal system is frequently politically weaponised, as evidenced by Paz now reaching for US extradition. It is noteworthy that the court that issued summons against Morales is based in Tarija, where Paz previously served as mayor, and so has his strongest political base.

The US backed the 2019-20 coup against Morales which saw him ousted from power (even the Guardian recognised it as such). US-led coups have plagued the continent’s socialists for decades, such that Morales labelled this most recent US interference “Operation Condor 2026″.

What’s noticeable about one leaked document is the use of a particular term: human shields.

It reads:

“asymmetric warfare;” use of women and elders as “escudos humanos” or ‘human shields’.

Anyone who pays attention to Zionist hasbara will be eerily familiar with that one phrase. It’s repeatedly regurgitated in IOF press releases to legitimise its endless murder of Palestinian and other civilians.

This observation is far from conclusive evidence of Israeli interference in Bolivia. However, it demonstrates strategic infiltration of US-aligned narrative frames into regional policing. After groundbreaking revelations of joint US-Zionist interference in Honduran politics (‘Hondurasgate‘), these influences should not be ruled out.

It’s remarkably clear from near-identical government press releases across the American continent where the Pentagon and US ‘national security’ interests have embedded themselves.

(See below: Argentina, Chile, Costa Rica, Ecuador, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Panamá, Paraguay, Peru — all in lockstep. Notably, socialist leaders — Sheinbaum in Mexico, Petro in Colombia, Lula in Brazil and Diaz in Cuba — are absent.)

Paz has made his alignment with those interests clear. The Bolivian people will now make clear theirs.

The US and Israel have released strikingly similar statements on Bolivia

It’s almost like they’re one single consolidated regime mobilized in defense of global oligarchy, and against indigenous resistance pic.twitter.com/daVG2g1Hva

— Max Blumenthal (@MaxBlumenthal) May 18, 2026

Featured image via Ricardo Ceppi/ Getty Images