FBI
The unit that freed California teen Hannah Anderson from her captor in Idaho is the same unit that captured Boston bombing suspect Dzhokhar Tsarnaev and rescued a 5-year-old named Ethan from an Alabama school-bus kidnapping—all within the last six months. The FBI's Hostage Rescue Team is apparently the force behind three of this year's highest-profile domestic operations and no wonder: it trains and often operates alongside the Navy's SEAL Team Six and the Army's Delta Force, making the unit one of the country's three top-level “Tier 1” CT assets. There is one major difference between the Hostage Rescue Team and the Naval or Army outfits it is on par with, however: As Louis J. Freeh, former director of the FBI once stated, “The members of the HRT are not commandos.”