General Staff and the Ministry of Defense took control of the Presidential Intelligence Agency - and by extension La Regional and the entire affiliated intelligence network - and renamed it the Guatemalan National Security Service (Servicio de Seguridad Nacional de Guatemala - SSNG). Within the framework of CIA supported counterinsurgency, a close relationship developed between right-wing paramilitary organizations and the security structures. Many civilian vigilantes linked to the MLN and right-wing paramilitary groups were simply absorbed by the Guatemalan Army G-2 in subsequent years. They operated as confidenciales or "military commissioners" and were attached to local army garrisons throughout the country. One Guatemalan high official acknowledged that over 3,000 MLN members collaborated with the Army. The most notorious of the right-wing paramilitary groups operating during the 1960s was the MANO, also known as the Mano Blanca ("White Hand"). Initially formed by the extreme-right MLN party as a paramilitary front in June 1966 to prevent President Méndez Montenegro from taking office, the MANO was quickly coopted by the army as an auxiliary force. The MANO - while being the only death squad formed autonomously from the government - had a largely military membership, and received substantial funding from wealthy landowners. The leader of the MLN and its paramilitary arm was Mario Sandoval Alarcon (later vice-president from 1974 to 1978). Sandoval Alarcon was a paid CIA asset for at least 30 years, starting in the 1950s. The MANO also received information from military intelligence through La Regional, with which it was linked to the Army General Staff and all of the main security forces. In January 1967 a special counter-terror unit labeled the Special Commando Unit of the Guatemalan Army (SCUGA) under the command of Colonel Maximo Zepeda was created. The CIA Station in Guatemala planned to expand its operations to include an intelligence-gathering network through SCUGA. The purpose of SCUGA was to collect information through the arrests and interrogation of what they deemed to be revolutionaries of communism. It carried out 'special assignments' that included abduction and assassinations of local authorities that the CIA deemed disruptive and "real and alleged communists." The CIA itself referred to the SCUGA as a "government-sponsored terrorist organization...used primarily for assassinations and political abductions" In March 1967, after Vice-Defense Minister and counterinsurgency coordinator Col. Francisco Sosa Avila was named director-general of the National Police, a special counterinsurgency unit of the National Police known as the Fourth