Former CIA Chief William Colby once called Pao "the biggest hero of the Vietnam War," for the 15 years he spent heading a CIA-sponsored guerrilla army fighting against a communist takeover of the Southeast Asian peninsula.

After his guerrillas ultimately lost to communist forces, Vang Pao came to the U.S., where he was credited with brokering the resettlement of tens of thousands of Hmong, an ethnic minority from the hillsides of Laos.

In 2007, he was indicted in the U.S. after a sting operation for conspiring to overturn the Communist Laotian government. Charges were dropped in 2009.

Yet the arrest galvanized Hmong Americans who saw him as a symbol in the fight for public acknowledgment of the Hmong role in the war, and for liberation of those still living in Laotian jungle.

Many Hmong soldiers were forced to fight alongside U.S. soldiers in Vietnam. Thousands died. More than 100,000 Hmong resettled in America. Here's why:

In 1969, at the time when Congress first learned of our secret war in Laos, about 18,000 Hmong soldiers had already been killed in battle died, and many women and children had died as well. The Hmong were taking a great risk in boldly fighting for the United States, trusting that we would stand by them. But in 1973, the U.S. began to pull out of Laos, leaving the Hmong on their own to fight thousands of North Vietnamese troops in Laos.

By 1975, Laos had fallen completely into Communist hands, and the lives of all Hmong people