A curious case of two largely similar but slightly altered photos has led America's own newspaper of record into questioning US Secretary of State Rex W. Tillerson's secret visit to Kabul.

Hours before arriving in Islamabad, Trump's top foreign policy aide stopped for a brief two-hour visit in Afghanistan, with both the US Embassy and President Ashraf Ghani's office making statements about a productive meeting in Kabul.

The visit didn't exactly take place in Kabul though, but at a US military base more than an hour's drive outside the Afghan capital. The Afghan government, however, didn't feel comfortable disclosing the venue.

Both the US Embassy and Ghani's office shared photos of Tillerson meeting the Afghan president. But conspicuously missing from the picture released by the Kabul was a large digital clock showing 'Zulu time' ? the US military term for Coordinated Universal Time ? and a red fire alarm, apparently removed by the Afghans so as not ot give away that the location was a heavily fortified US military facility.

The New York Times was the first to pick up on the missing details, questioning as to why Ghani's government would go to such an extent to remove something as insignificant as a clock and an alarm.

"There is no question that the photo has been manipulated," Hany Farid, a photo forensics expert from Dartmouth College told NYT, saying the manipulation was most likely a bad and easily detectable Photoshop job.

Did the Afghans try to hide the location due to security concerns? Or was it an attempt to deceive the Afghan population into thinking it was an Afghan venue so as to show the meeting in a positive light? Only Kabul knows.