Shortly after the 1998 gubernatorial elections, everywhere you looked on TV he seemed to loom from the screen: that great domed head anchored by a linebacker’s neck to a professional rassler’s torso. And you heard …
May 27, 2026
Salisbury is an ex-SEAL who wrote for the Reader from the early 1990s to 2005.
Articles by Bill Salisbury
The Jesse Ventura fake
Jesse Ventura was not a Navy SEAL
The Reader has started this series of its best stories from the past 52 years — 2600 cover stories and some remarkable interior features — to help make up for the loss of its physical …
February 27, 2026
Navy Seals spy for Bill Koch entry in America's Cup race
The Reader has started this series of its best stories from the past 52 years — 2600 cover stories and some remarkable interior features — to help make up for the loss of its physical …
January 12, 2026
The San Diego look, according to painters
What distinguishes San Diego landscape to paintersIn Coronado one day, after lunch with a friend, he went into a CD shop while his friend waited outside on a bench. When Crooks came out, he noticed …
August 27, 2023
Bonita – horses replaced lemons
It’s Fairly Easy to Get Bored Around Here Bonita lies in the Sweetwater Valley, nestled inside three freeways--I-805 to the west, 54 to the north, and 125 to the east. To the south lies the …
April 24, 2023
Frogmen sleuths used by Bill Koch against other yachtsmen
SEALS give first-hand account of America's Cup spying, part 1 I was knocking back triple espressos at Bay Books in Coronado when I came across this revelation buried in a feature article on "Wild Bill" …
February 5, 2023
SEALS in Afghanistan, Panama, Vietnam, Grenada
Koch Overboard Jack told me how a retired SEAL officer and CIA operative had recruited SEAL Team guys for a commando op: to recon the underwater hulls — and especially the keels — of the …
November 27, 2021
Jack Kemp and the fugitive, U.S. Grant's son, Seals ambivalent about Jesse Ventura
Kemp and the Fugitive Fotomat also gave Graham a political base. One of the first beneficiaries was Jack Kemp. On May 23, 1968, the San Diego Union reported that Kemp had “joined Fotomat Corp., La …
July 5, 2021
Letters from Baghdad, Green Beret who hunted Bin Laden, the road from Kuwait
Nothing Like the Movies The current threats are car bombs against the vehicles lined up to get inside the Green Zone or rockets or mortars fired from a mile or a couple miles away. Fortunately, …
May 29, 2021