Three men were shot to death in a hotel room by the Bolivian police, supposedly because they were plotting to assassinate Evo Morales. Except, when the details come out, it sounds totally dodgy.

But while Mr. Morales has described the men killed in Santa Cruz as part of a "tentacle of a structure" intent on killing him and other senior officials named in a list obtained by his government, missteps by officials in describing their handling of the group have led to further questions about the men and what they were doing in Santa Cruz.

Mr. GarcÍa Linera, the vice president, at first said the three were killed in a 30-minute gunfight, but an insurance report filed for the hotel and obtained by La Razón, a newspaper, apparently found no signs of an exchange of gunfire. Two men taken captive at the hotel, Elod Toazo, a Hungarian, and Mario Tadik, a Bolivian, seem to have surrendered without a fight.

"What happened was the killing of three people who were sleeping, which means murder," said Óscar Ortiz, president of Bolivia's Senate and a top opponent of Mr. Morales.

Alfredo Rada, a senior minister, made things worse when he went on television with images of men in Santa Cruz clasping weapons, claiming they were linked to those killed. But the men in the photos, lifted from a Facebook page, debunked the claim by explaining that they practiced "airsoft," a game in which participants fire at one another with pellet guns.

So, is Morales the great leader of the indigenous tribes who will bring equality to Bolivia or is he a paranoid crackpot out to grab power? Either Morales and his administration staged this whole "plot" to strengthen his claims that there are those plotting against him - which means he's a dangerous nutcase, or it's truly a major clusterfuck in management (Facebook photos? really?) - which makes me lose any confidence that he will be able to do anything constructive while in government.