In Mexico, Hunt helped lay the framework for Operation PBFortune, later renamed Operation PBSuccess, the successful covert operation to overthrow Jacobo Árbenz, the democratically elected president of Guatemala. Hunt was assigned as Chief of Covert Action in Japan. He afterwards served as Chief of Station in Uruguay, (where he was noted by American diplomatic contemporary Samuel F. Hart for controversial working methods). Hunt would later say "What we wanted to do was to have a terror campaign, to terrify Arbenz particularly, to terrify his troops, much as the German Stuka bombers terrified the population of Holland, Belgium and Poland”.