The U.S. Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) has a rich history of intervention over many decades in Guatemala, a country in Central America. Guatemala is bordered by the North Pacific Ocean and the Gulf of Honduras (also known as the Caribbean Sea). The four bordering countries are Mexico, El Salvador, Honduras and Belize. Due to the proximity of Guatemala to the United States, the fear of the Soviet Union creating a beachhead in Guatemala created panic in the United States government during the Cold War. The CIA undertook Operation PBSuccess to overthrow the democratically elected Jacobo Árbenz in the 1954 Guatemalan coup d'état. Carlos Castillo Armas replaced him as a military dictator. Guatemala was subsequently ruled by a series of military dictatorships for decades. Between 1962 and 1996, Left-wing guerrillas fought the U.S. backed military governments during the Guatemalan Civil War. According to the George Washington University's "The National Security Archive," there are still over 100,000 pages of documents on CIA activities in Guatemala that have not been released. Revelations secured through Freedom of Information Requests On May 23, 1997, CIA released 1,400 pages of the 100,000 secret archives on the CIA's involvement in the 1954 Guatemalan coup d'état in response to numerous FOIA requests from the National Security Archive, a non-for-profit research organization and archive located on the campus of George Washington University. The release of these classified documents came a full five years after the announcement by the CIA director, Robert Gates, that the CIA would declassify and release information on its post Cold War history. Coincidentally, the CIA released the documents "only days after a member of the CIA's own historical review panel was quoted in The New York Times as calling the CIA's commitment to openness 'a brilliant public relations snow job.'" The released documents cover the CIA's thought on the intentions of Guatemalan president Jacobo Árbenz. He was elected in 1950, "to continue a process of socio-economic reforms... [are disdainfully referred to by the CIA] in its memoranda as 'an intensely nationalistic program of progress colored by the touchy, anti-foreign inferiority complex of the 'Banana Republic'". According to staff historian Gerald Haines' 1995 report, concern was growing over Jacobo Arbenz's left-leaning policies and his shift towards communism. The Guatemalan Revolution of 1944-54 had overthrown the US-backed dictator Jorge Ubico, and brought a popular leftist government to power. Although most high-level US officials recognized that a hostile