Jesse Brown

58, a Marine veteran of the Vietnam War who led the nation's second-largest Cabinet agency, died in Washington on Thursday after a long illness.

At the Department of Veterans Affairs, Mr. Brown liked to call himself the secretary "for" veterans affairs and said he had won several battles with Congress because "we hold the high moral ground." Mr. Brown suffered from lower motor neuron syndrome, which attacks nerve cells in the brain and the spinal cord.

Mr. Brown enlisted in the Marines in 1963. Two years later he was seriously wounded while on patrol in Danang.