John Mein was just a block from his home outside Guatemala City when rebels from the pro-Castro Rebel Armed Forces (FAR) ambushed his car on August 28, 1968, in the first assassination ever recorded of a U.S. Ambassador abroad. Terrorists boxed out his car, forcing him into the street. When Mein tried to run, two men fired at least nine bullets into him with a machine gun. In FAR’s admission of guilt, they wrote they had intended to kidnap the Ambassador in order to force the release of a guerrilla leader. Mein had served as the U.S. representative in Guatemala for three years.