caused the MR-13 to retreat to Guatemala City. There, the MR-13 began to engage in selective killings of members of the security forces as well as U.S. military advisors. The insurgents assassinated the American ambassador to Guatemala, John Gordon Mein, in 1968, and the German ambassador to Guatemala, Karl Von Spreti, in 1970. SCUGA Following the inauguration of Méndez Montenegro, he appointed Colonel Rafael Arriaga Bosque to Defense Minister. Mendez activated the 'Special Commando Unit of the Guatemalan Army' (SCUGA). The SCUGA was placed under the command of Colonel Máximo Zepeda in January 1967, after which point it assumed command over most of the Guatemalan government's urban counterinsurgency operations against PGT. Composed of both military and civilian personnel, the SCUGA functioned both as a counter-terror apparatus and as an intelligence-gathering apparatus. SCUGA commandos routinely carried out abductions, bombings, street assassinations, torture, "disappearances" and executions of both documented and suspected communists. The SCUGA often collaborated with the Fourth Corps of the Guatemalan National Police, which carried out similar activities. Together these forces often carried out various counter-terror and counter-insurgency operations under the guise of fictitious paramilitary death squads and anti-communist front organizations (known by acronyms such as the NOA, CADEG, CRAG and RAYO). In addition to engaging in operations under the guise of para-militarism, the SCUGA nominally worked with paramilitary death squads such as the infamous Mano Blanca ("White Hand"). Mano Blanca Mano Blanca, or the Movement of Organized Nationalist Action, was set up in 1966 as a front for the MLN to carry out its more violent activities, along with many other similar groups, including the New Anticommunist Organization and the Anticommunist Council of Guatemala. These three groups operated within the United States supported government arm known as the Regional Telecommunications Center, which linked them to various government, military and police agencies. This network was built on the Committees against Communism created by the Central Intelligence Agency after the coup in 1954. The members of Mano Blanco were largely army officers, and the outfit received a lot of its funding from planters. It also received information from military intelligence. It was one of the only death squads directly affiliated with a political party. Most such groups were "phantom organizations," created so that the Guatemalan military could carry out illicit activities. Armed with this support, Mano Blanca began a campaign described by the United States Department of State as one of