William L. Uanna

William Lewis Uanna
William Lewis Uanna
Born	(1909-05-13)May 13, 1909 Medford, Massachusetts
Died	December 22, 1961(1961-12-22) (aged 52) Addis Ababa, Ethiopia
Place of Burial	Arlington National Cemetery
Allegiance	United States of America
Service/branch	United States Army
Years of service	1941–1947
Rank	Major
Commands held	1st Technical Service Detachment
Battles/wars	World War II: Bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki Occupation of Japan
Other work	Central Intelligence Agency agent Special assistant to the Secretary of Commerce Chief of Division of Physical Security, Department of State

William Lewis "Bud" Uanna (May 13, 1909 – December 22, 1961) was a United States security expert. Uanna held many top security positions, including being a security officer on the Manhattan Project and Chief of the Division of Physical Security at the Department of State.

Uanna joined the Army in May 1941, and was commissioned in November 1942. Assigned to the Counter Intelligence Corps, he served on the staff of I Service Command and the X Corps. In August 1943, he became an instructor at its school in Chicago, where he wrote a manual on physical security. He joined the Manhattan Project in late 1943, and in August 1944, was appointed Security Officer at Oak Ridge, Tennessee, one of the Manhattan Project's largest sites. In February 1945, he assumed command of the 1st Technical Service Detachment, which was responsible for the security of 509th Composite Group, including its personnel, bases and equipment. After the war ended he accompanied the Manhattan Project team sent to survey the damage done by the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

In 1947, he was chosen by the newly created Atomic Energy Commission (AEC) to head its program to provide security clearances to its personnel, for which he named and developed the criteria for the Q clearance. He was an administrative officer at the Central Intelligence Agency from 1949 to 1951, and was the special assistant to the Secretary of Commerce. He was responsible for physical security at the State Department from 1953 until his death in Addis Ababa in 1961.

Early life

William Lewis Uanna was born in Medford, Massachusetts, on May 13, 1909, the son of Italian immigrants Anthony Uanna and his wife Theresa née Ferullo.^[1] He attended Medford High School, and then Tufts College, where he was a halfback on the college football team,^[2] and an intercollegiate wrestling champion.^[3] He earned a degree in engineering, but soon returned to Tufts to get an M.A. in education, and became a teacher. He worked at this job for six months, teaching physics and mathematics in high school.^[4]

Uanna entered Suffolk University, from which he received a law degree, and passed the bar exam, but then took a job with a surveying crew. He worked on a series of construction projects for the city of Medford and the state of Massachusetts, and was employed as a civilian by the US Army Corps of Engineers on the construction of Grenier Army Air Field in New Hampshire and Fort Devens in Massachusetts, where he would later serve as an Army Counter Intelligence agent during World War II.^[4]

Counter Intelligence Corps

Enlisting in the Army on May 28, 1941,^[5][6] Uanna was assigned to the Counter Intelligence Corps. His enlistment was supposed to be for one year, but the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941 kept him in the war for the duration and beyond. In 1942 he attended the Officer Candidate School at Fort Belvoir, and, on graduation in November 1942, was commissioned as a 2nd Lieutenant in the Army Corps of Engineers. He was assigned to the Counter Intelligence Corps (CIC) as Director of Operations of the I Service Command, responsible for 300 agents.^[6][7]

Uanna on Tinian Island 1945

In February 1943, Uanna was posted to the X Corps, then based at Sherman, Texas, as commander of its CIC detachment. As such, he was responsible for 112 officers and 35 agents, responsible for conducting investigations and evaluating individuals. At this time X Corps consisted of the 42nd, 84th, 86th, 88th and 104th Infantry Divisions. In August 1943, he became an instructor at the CIC school in Chicago, where he taught subjects such as fingerprinting and telephone tapping. At this time he wrote a manual on physical security used by CIC Agents. Some 1000 copies were printed and issued for distribution by the Provost Marshal General.^[6][7]

Joining the Manhattan Project in late 1943, Uanna was initially assigned to the New England area, where he looked after security at 150 organizations, including key contractors Stone & Webster, General Electric, Westinghouse and American Cyanamid, and universities such as Harvard, Brown, Yale and MIT. In August 1944, he was appointed Security Officer for the large town and industrial installation built by the US Government at Oak Ridge, Tennessee, to enrich uranium for an atomic bomb. As such, he oversaw the physical security of the site, and was responsible the security clearance of over 50,000 personnel. He supervised the activities of the town's police, and provided security for the transport of fissile materials from Oak Ridge to the weapons laboratory at Los Alamos, New Mexico.^[6][7]

In February 1945, Uanna assumed command of the 1st Technical Service Detachment, which was attached to the 509th Composite Group. He became responsible for the security clearance of its personnel, and oversaw the movement of the 509th from its training base in Wendover Army Air Field, Utah to Tinian Island in the Western Pacific. There, he was in charge of the physical security of its installations, and supervised the unloading and installation of its stores and equipment. He also looked after security at other bases that might be used by the 509th in an emergency. After the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki and the subsequent surrender of Japan in August 1945, he accompanied the Manhattan Project team sent to survey the damage, spending four weeks in Nagasaki.^[6][7]

Later life

Uanna returned to the United States in October 1945, and was discharged from the Army in April 1946. He returned to Boston, where he practiced law and engineering, but was recalled to active duty in October 1946 to conduct an investigation into reports that servicemen had tried to sell pictures of the atomic bomb to The Baltimore Sun. These turned out to be pictures of the dummy bombs used for drop tests.^[4][7] In 1947, he was chosen by the newly created Atomic Energy Commission (AEC) to head its program to provide security clearances to its personnel, a requirement of the Atomic Energy Act of 1946.^[7] At this time he named and developed the criteria for the AEC's Q clearance.^[8] He then became second in command of the Armed Forces Special Weapons Project's construction program, responsible for over $100 million of works.^[4]

Uanna with colleagues at the State Department 1958

From 1949 to 1951, Uanna was an administrative officer at the newly created Central Intelligence Agency (CIA),^[4] where wrote the briefing manual for the Office of Policy Coordination (OPC).^[8] The OPC was the covert action branch of the intelligence community and at this time was overseen jointly by the State Department and the Department of Defense, rather than by the Director of Central Intelligence.^[9]

From 1951 to 1953, during the Korean War, he was the special assistant to the Secretary of Commerce as Chief of the Facilities Protection Board, and was a staff member of the Industrial Evaluations Board. These Boards were overseen by the Interdepartmental Committee on Internal Security (ICIS) and the National Security Resources Board (NSRB).^[4][10] In 1953 he accepted a 90-day temporary assignment at the Department of State as assistant to Otto Otepka. Otepka was in charge of State's Evaluations Division. It was Uanna's expertise in countering subversion that landed him this position at the height of Senator Joseph McCarthy's accusations of Communists and Communist sympathizers in the Army and State Department. Using procedures he developed at the AEC he wrote the Evaluators Handbook that would be used by State Department investigators to review the loyalty and "suitability" of State Department employees in accordance with Executive Order 10450 and Executive Order 10501.^[10][11]

Marine Security Guard Graduation

In 1953 the State Department's physical security was split between foreign and domestic branches. He reorganized these into one group and renamed it the Division of Physical Security. He was named as its new Chief. He then published a Protection of Dignitaries Manual and established the Marine Security Guard Training School. As Chief of the Division he was responsible for the security of all State's personnel and facilities in the United States and abroad including the Secretary of State John Foster Dulles and later Christian Herter and all visiting foreign dignitaries. He was the State Department liaison with the U.S. Department of Defense. He was a participant in 1955 in Operation Alert, a civil defense drill in which U.S. Government officials were taken from Washington, D.C. to a relocation facility in rural Virginia. The aim was continuity of government in the event of a nuclear attack.^[4][10][12] He handled security for the visits to the United States of Queen Elizabeth II and Prince Phillip in 1957, and of Nikita Khrushchev in 1959.^[4]

Uanna died of a heart attack on the grounds of the American Embassy in Ethiopia in Addis Ababa on December 22, 1961,^[13] and was buried in Arlington National Cemetery.^[14] His wife Bonnie née Leonard is deceased, he is survived by his son Steven Lee.^[13] They never accepted that his death was from natural causes.^[10]

In the media

Actor James Whitmore portrayed Uanna in the film Above and Beyond, Stephen Macht in Enola Gay: The Men, the Mission, the Atomic Bomb, and Minor Mustain in Hiroshima.^[10]

External links

• William Lewis Uanna Collection, The Manhattan Project Heritage Preservation Association, Inc.

Notes

References

• Hove, Mark T. (2011). History of the Bureau of Diplomatic Security of the United States Department of State. Washington, D.CV.: Department of State. Bureau of Diplomatic Security.; Global Publishing Solutions (U.S.); United States. Department of State. Office of the Historian. 
• Montague, Ludwell Lee (1992). General Walter Bedell Smith as Director of Central Intelligence October 1950 – February 1953. University Park, Pennsylvania: Pennsylvania State University. ISBN 0-271-00750-8. OCLC 22707456. 
• Spencer, Thomas E. (1998). Where They're Buried: A Directory Containing More Than Twenty Thousand Names of Notable Persons Buried in American Cemeteries, With Listings of Many Prominent People Who Were Cremated. Baltimore: Clearfield Co. ISBN 978-0-8063-4823-0. OCLC 40245482. 

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