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
Buried at Arlington National Cemetery
Allegiance United States United States
Service/branch United States Army
Years of service 1941–1947
Rank gold maple leaf Major
Service number O-1107189
Commands held 1st Technical Service Detachment
Battles/wars

World War II:

Spouse(s) Bonnie née Leonard
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, who gained prominence as a security officer on the Manhattan Project, which built the first atomic bomb during World War II. He later served as 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 from 1951 to 1953 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, Ethiopia in 1961. Uanna is listed in Who's Who in America Volume 32 1962-1963.

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][2] He attended Medford High School, and then Tufts College on an athletic scholarship, where he was a halfback on the college football team,[3] and an intercollegiate wrestling champion.[4] Although tests revealed an IQ of over 160 Uanna said that if he had not been able to play football he would never have been able to attend college. While at Tufts he suffered a broken nose playing football, a severe case of blood poisoning from a mat burn in wrestling and a broken leg in the National College Wrestling Championships. 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.[5]

Uanna was then employed on a series of private, City of Medford, State of Massachusetts and US Army Corps of Engineers projects, progressing from a rod man on a surveying crew to a construction superintendent. As a civilian with the Corps of Engineers he would be involved in the construction of Grenier Army Air Field in New Hampshire and Fort Devens in Massachusetts, where he would serve as an Army Counter Intelligence agent during WW II.[5] During the years 1938 to 1942 he attended Suffolk University graduating in 1942 with an L.L.B. He passed the Massachusetts Bar examination and would later be admitted to practice before the Federal Bar. In his November 19, 1956 Foreign Service Essay he describes this time as "...a most difficult one as the demands of my position caused me to miss many of my classes". He goes on to describe how it was while attending law school and working as a construction superintendent that he became aware of the necessity of management and administration. He purchased the seven volume set of books published by the International City Managers Association, read them several times and became an Associate Member of the ICMA in 1940. In the early 1950s Uanna attended American University in Washington, D.C. and needed to submit his thesis to receive a Doctorate in Public Administration. It was his schedule at a job he was to take at the U.S. Department of State that kept him from finishing his thesis.

Counter Intelligence Corps

Enlisting in the Army on May 28, 1941,[6][7] 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 Army until after World War II. 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.[7][8]

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.[7][8]

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.[7][8]

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 unconditional surrender of Japan in August 1945, he accompanied the Manhattan Project team sent to survey the damage, spending four weeks in Nagasaki.[7][8]

Postwar career

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.[5][8] 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.[8] At this time he named and developed the criteria for the AEC's Q clearance.[9]

In 1948 he became second in command of an Armed Forces Special Weapons Project (AFSWP) construction program to build Atomic Bomb storage bases. As the highest ranking civilian on the project he was responsible for over $100 million of works.[5] The AFSWP was headquartered at Sandia Base in New Mexico but Uanna was operating out of Kansas City, Missouri, where he had bought a home. Here the FBI sought him out to continue the relationship they had developed with him at the Atomic Energy Commission where internal FBI memos acquired through the Freedom of Information Act reveal he had been their "main source of confidential information within the AEC."[10] As the project was nearing completion ahead of schedule he submitted the names of the personnel who would maintain the Atomic Bombs and their storage bases to the FBI for background investigations.[11]

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),[5] where wrote the briefing manual for the Office of Policy Coordination (OPC).[9] 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.[12]

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).[5][13] Page 5 of his Foreign Service Essay reveals that "The Board was charged with the responsibility of developing security programs for industry. Several such programs were developed jointly with representatives of such industries or public utilities as electric power, transportation, explosives, petroleum, communications, etc." He goes on to say that since he was directly responsible to the Secretary of Commerce, after the Republican Administration took office in 1953 he found himself without a job. 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.[13][14]

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.[5][13][15]

Uanna 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.[5][13][15] Among his many diplomatic security responsibilities was the handling of the security for the visit to the United States of Queen Elizabeth II and Prince Phillip in 1957. In November 1958 the Department of State posted him as Administrative Officer to the U.S. Embassy in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. He returned to the United States briefly to handle the state visit of Nikita Khrushchev in 1959.[5]

Uanna died of a heart attack on the grounds of the American Embassy in Ethiopia in Addis Ababa on December 22, 1961,[16] and was buried in Arlington National Cemetery.[17] He was survived by his wife Bonnie née Leonard, who died on October 25, 1992 and his son Steven Lee.[16]

Film portrayals

Uanna was portrayed by James Whitmore in the 1952 motion picture Above and Beyond, Stephen Macht in the 1980 TV movie Enola Gay: The Men, the Mission, the Atomic Bomb, and Minor Mustain in the 1995 Japanese/Canadian film Hiroshima.[13] At the end of the movie Enola Gay, an update of the post World War II careers of the movie's main characters was shown. In a short clip showing Macht in his role as Bud Uanna it said "Stephen Macht as Major William "Bud" Uanna - Uanna became a member of the CIA and was murdered in Africa, any records of his death have subsequently disappeared."

Notes

  1. ↑ "Uanna – Public Member Trees". Ancestry.com. Retrieved October 22, 2013.
  2. ↑ "Anthony Uanna from Ward 3 Medford in 1940 Census District 9-318". Archive.com. Retrieved September 3, 2015.
  3. ↑ "Tufts Quarterback is Due back Today". Lowell Sun. October 18, 1932. p. 38. Retrieved October 22, 2013. (subscription required (help)).
  4. ↑ "NCAA 1931" (PDF). NCAA. Retrieved October 25, 2013.
  5. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 "Security is his Job – William Lewis Uanna". The New York Times. July 26, 1958. Archived from the original on October 22, 2013. Retrieved October 22, 2013.
  6. ↑ "William L Uanna". World War II U.S. Army Enlistments U.S. Army Enlistment Record. Retrieved October 25, 2013.
  7. 1 2 3 4 5 "FBI background check on William Lewis Uanna". Wikimedia. March 31, 1947.
  8. 1 2 3 4 5 6 "Short Biographical Sketch of William Uanna". Archived from the original on October 22, 2013. Retrieved October 22, 2013.
  9. 1 2 Wellerstein, Alex (January 16, 2012). "Assassination as Non-Proliferation: Historical and Sociological Thoughts". Retrieved October 24, 2013.
  10. ↑ "Bud Uanna AEC FBI Armed Forces Special Weapons Project V.P. Keay to D.M. Ladd". February 2, 1948.
  11. ↑ "Bud Uanna Armed Forces Special Weapons Project requesting investigations for personnel that will maintain the Atomic Bombs and the facilities where they are stored". July 1, 1949.
  12. ↑ Montague 1992, pp. 77–79.
  13. 1 2 3 4 5 "Should We Be Alarmed by the Wide Use of Mercenaries?". History News Network. Retrieved October 24, 2013.
  14. ↑ Hale, William Harlan (August 17, 1954). "Big Brother' in Foggy Bottom –". The Reporter: 10–17.
  15. 1 2 Hove 2011, pp. 142–143.
  16. 1 2 "William Uanna, Security expert: Officer of US Embassy in Addis Ababa". The New York Times. December 23, 1961. Retrieved October 23, 2013. (subscription required (help)).
  17. ↑ Spencer 1998, p. 111.

References

External links

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