In 1955 Scott asked for a transfer to Mexico City, and took office as station chief there in August 1956, becoming "a virtual proconsul" ("the real power behind the throne"). In December 1958 he launched Operation LITEMPO recruiting agents and collaborators, and gained then Mexican President Adolfo López Mateos as well as future presidents Gustavo Díaz Ordaz and Luis Echeverría. Scott remained in Mexico until his retirement in 1969, a period that included recording Lee Harvey Oswald's visit to the Cuban and Soviet embassies in Mexico (between Sept.27 and Oct. 2nd, 1963), the rise of the People's Guerrilla Group in Mexico, the 1968 Tlatelolco students massacre and the eve of the Mexican Dirty War (the Mexican theatre of the cold war).