SEAL Team 6

The elite of the elite: SEAL Team 6 stormed a compound this weekend in Pakistan and took out Public Enemy #1: Osama bin Laden. Primary players in covert operations since the 1980s, SEAL Team 6 remains the United States' top counter-terrorism force.

SEAL Team 6 was founded by Richard Marcinko partly in response to the failed operation to remove 66 American hostages from Tehran, Iran after the overthrow of the Shah by Islamic revolutionaries in that country.

On November 4, 1979, more than three thousand Iranian students attacked the American Embassy in Tehran, and 66 Americans were held hostage. Fifty-two of these hostages remained in Iranian custody for 444 of the most intense days of recent American history. They were finally released on January 20, 1891 - the day of new President Ronald Reagan's inaugural address.

Team 6 became officially operational in 1981, and the nature of their operations requires that most information about the team remain classified.

Marcinko, who in the 1980s was one of the two Naval advisers to the Joint Chiefs of Staff's Terrorist Action Team, numbered the team "six" to confuse the Soviets. At the time of Team Six's formation, there were only two SEAL teams: one and two. Marcinko maintains that he chose six to keep the Soviets wondering where teams three, four, and five were in the world.

SEAL Team 6 is officially known today as the Naval Special Warfare Development Group.