25 years ago today, eight Americans from CIA Team Alpha became the first US personnel behind enemy lines in Afghanistan. On the night of October 17, 2001, they flew in on Black Hawks from a secret base in Uzbekistan and landed in the mountains of the north. The team mixed CIA case officers, linguists, paramilitaries, and a Green Beret detailed to the Agency. They were an improvised group assembled in days, not months. Their job was simple and enormous: link up with Northern Alliance fighters, open the door for follow-on forces, and start rolling back the Taliban and al Qaeda before another attack could be launched from Afghan soil. They partnered with Uzbek warlord Abdul Rashid Dostum, rode horses across rugged terrain, carried cash to build alliances, and helped coordinate the airstrikes that broke Taliban lines. That work helped flip Mazar-i-Sharif and set the early tempo of the campaign, but the cost came quickly. At Qala-i-Jangi fortress, while questioning captured fighters, Johnny “Mike” Spann became the first American killed in the war, while teammate David Tyson fought his way out of the uprising. The surviving members later worked to get Afghan partners and their families to safety after the 2021 withdrawal. Team Alpha was a small, hastily assembled team that did the first hard thing after the towers fell on 9/11. Their story, told in books, podcasts, and interviews with survivors like Justin Sapp and David Tyson, is a reminder of what “first in” actually looked like: few people, high risk, imperfect partners, and no guarantee of extraction. Respect.