David Webb
The true identity buried beneath the CIA's legend of Jason Bourne.
David Webb is the original name of the protagonist within Robert Ludlum's literary canon, specifically the novel The Bourne Identity (1980). Before the events of the novel, Webb had a Thai wife named Dao and two children named Joshua and Alyssa in Phnom Penh. His wife and children were killed during the Vietnam War when a fighter plane strayed into Cambodia, dropped two bombs, and strafed a spot near the Mekong River. Unknown to Webb, Joshua survived.
Quick Facts
- Affiliation
- Treadstone Program, Central Intelligence Agency
- First appears
- The Bourne Identity (Novel)
Lore & Background
Enraged by the injustice and randomness of his loss, Webb went to Saigon and, under the careful guidance of friend and CIA officer Alexander Conklin, ended up training for an elite top secret Special Forces unit called 'Medusa'. Within that organization Webb was known only by his code name, 'Delta One'. Medusa was an assassination team or death squad created to infiltrate Northern Vietnam and assassinate members of the Viet Cong and its collaborators.
Its members were criminals; its leader, a man called Delta, ran Medusa with an iron fist. During a mission to save Webb's brother, U.S. Army Lieutenant Gordon Webb, an original Medusa team member named Jason Charles Bourne was discovered to be a double agent. When Delta found Bourne after killing his way through the North Vietnamese, he simply killed Bourne in the jungles of Tam Quan. Years later, a black ops arm of the CIA called 'Treadstone Seventy-One' was formed to eliminate Carlos the Jackal.
Webb was called up by David Abbott, nicknamed 'The Monk', to be its principal agent. At this point, Webb (Delta) took the identity of Jason Bourne, due to the actual Bourne's status as MIA in the war and his reality as a brutal killer with a long criminal record. The assassin's alias was 'Cain'.
Reader's Guide
David Webb represents the foundational origin of the franchise's central anti-hero.
Did You Know?
- The real Jason Charles Bourne was a double agent who alerted North Vietnamese soldiers to Medusa's location; Delta killed him in the jungles of Tam Quan.
- The assassin alias used by Webb under Treadstone was 'Cain', created to draw out Carlos the Jackal.
More in Characters
Elsewhere in The Bourne Identity
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