Brain Damage

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DAVID Ogden took a long time to die, and he did not die unnoticed. The course of his illness was followed in the nation's press and on the six o'clock news. David Ogden had tumors sprouting in his brain like mushrooms on a dewy morning. David Ogden was brain damaged. David Ogden was doomed. David Ogden, after four long months, was finally dead.

The attention called to Ogden 's illness was less because of what he was than what he once had been. He was, at the time he was stricken, Deputy Director for Operations of the CIA, and as such he was accustomed to maintaining the lowest of profiles. He was also, however, one of the last of the original OSS boys, one of Wild Bill Donovan's daredevil band, which, with casual gallantry, had set occupied Europe ablaze during World War II; and as such he was fair game for exploitation. During his long illness, as he lay in a coma at Bethesda Naval Hospital outside Washington, his wartime exploits were chewed and rechewed in both the print and the electronic news media. Young David Ogden, who had made seventeen jumps into occupied France. Young David Ogden with Tito's guerrillas in the mountains of Yugoslavia. Young David Ogden, the terror of Trafalgar Square.

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