Th CIA has lifted the lid on the tense first few days of America's hunt through Afghanistan for Al-Qaeda in the days following the 9/11 attacks.
The secretive agency has been periodically releasing the never-seen-before images that catalogue its Operation Jawbreaker mission.
In the days following the devastating terror attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon that cost thousands of lives, CIA agents began preparing to descend on Afghanistan.
In one of the pictures, an agent wears a 'New York' emblazoned cap, which the CIA says he brought with him to remind him of the importance of the mission.
The intelligence agency has been releasing handpicked pictures daily in the days since the world marked the 18th anniversary of the September 11 terror attacks.
The images shed light on details ranging from what the Jawbreaker team ate during the mission, to glimpses of the personal talismans they brought with them as they embarked on their dangerous task.
The no-doubt meticulously selected series of images tweeted out by the tight-lipped CIA recall the initial days of its response in the aftermath of the terror attacks.
Just hours after the Twin Towers fell, the CIA had briefed President George Bush.
The CIA had reported to President Bill Clinton three years earlier that it suspected Al-Qaeda was preparing attacks in the US that might include hijacking aircraft.
Its director is pictured during the phone call in which he tells the leader the agency is certain Osama bin Laden and Al-Qaeda were behind the attacks.
Two days later, US counter-terror operatives began planning a mission to hunt Al Qaeda in Afghanistan.
The CIA's series of tweets recount how as orders were going in for guns and gear, the officers hurriedly updated their wills "not knowing when or if they would return from the mission.
To ensure their mission's success, they needed to convince to convince the Afghan Northern Alliance (NA), which formed in 1996 after the Taliban took over Kabul, to work with the CIA to fight their mutual enemy.
An Mi-17 helicopter was drafted to drop the agents into Afghanistan.
An image tweeted by the agency shows the CIA officers sitting in a chopper atop three boxes containing US$3 million in cash (£2.4m in today's money).
The CIA wrote that the cash was needed to pay the NA and convince other Afghan tribes to help them.
It took the officers, some of whom were fluent in Russian, Dari, and Farsi, six days to arrive in Afghanistan during the mountainous country's harsh winter period as they embarked on their mission through treacherous territory.
The CIA took the step of concealing the CIA officers faces in the images to continue to protect their identities following their work in the region.
Nearly two decades later, the war in Afghanistan, which has cost hundreds of thousands of lives, continues.
The US has slowly been withdrawing troops from Afghanistan since 2014.
