Sar Phouthasack, commander of the veterans group who worked for the CIA’s special Army unit, talks to other Hmong and Laotian Special Guerrilla Unit veterans at the ceremony. After Laos became a communist country in 1975 and the new government began to imprison people from the opposition, Phouthasack fled to Thailand along with hundreds of thousands of fellow Laotian veterans. Yehyun Kim / CT Mirror