government in Guatemala by itself did not constitute a direct security threat to the United States, they claimed to view events there in the context of the growing Cold War struggle with the Soviet Union and feared Guatemala could reduce the influence of US corporations (such as United Fruit) in the region, and thus reduce US influence. Decree 900, passed in 1952, threatened to increase Guatemala's autonomy and create a successful example of land reform in Central America. The head of the CIA, Director of Central Intelligence (DCI) Walter Bedell Smith advocated for action because in his assessment without US help, the Guatemalan opposition would remain inept, disorganized and inefficient. The anti-communist elements—the Catholic hierarchy, landowners, business interests, the railway workers union, university students and the army were prepared to prevent socialism, but apart from the US they had little outside support. In contrast to Smith, and as stated in the document "CIA and Guatemala Assassination Proposals 1952-1954", "other US officials, especially in the US Department of State, urged a more cautious approach. The Bureau of Inter-American Affairs, for example, did not want to present 'the spectacle of the elephant shaking with alarm before the mouse'". The Bureau of Inter-American Affairs advocated for a policy that focused on "firm persuasion with the withholding of virtually all cooperative assistance, and the concluding of military defense assistance pacts, with El Salvador, Nicaragua, and Honduras. Ultimately, the Truman administration adopted the Department of State position [as]… the official public US policy"; however, "the CIA assessment…had support within the Truman administration as well". According to reports later declassified by the CIA in 1995, the democratically elected president of the country, President Jacobo Árbenz, made attempts to institute a working relationship with Guatemalan communists soon after he was sworn in to office. The coup was considered primarily as a deterrent against fears regarding the possibility of a Soviet beachhead in the Western Hemisphere, from which the USSR could conceivably be able to fire mid-range ballistic missiles at the United States. The CIA's Historical analysis department prepared a report outlining how to overthrow the Guatemalan government. The first CIA effort to overthrow Árbenz—a CIA collaboration with Nicaraguan dictator, Anastasio Somoza, to support a "disgruntled" general named Carlos Castillo Armas, and codenamed the Operation as PBSuccess—was authorized by US President Truman in 1952. The plans to overthrow Arbenz were more ambitious than the operations that removed Mossadeq