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ByDeniseLavoie The Associated Press BOSTON Two college friends of marathon bomber Dzhokhar Tsar- naev were sentenced Friday to prison after one tearfully apologized to the residents of Boston for impeding the investigation and the other had former Massachusetts Gov. Michael Dukakis write a letter on his behalf in the hope of getting a lighter punishment. Azamat Tazhayakov, 21, was sentenced to 3 years for impeding the in- vestigation into the attack while authorities frantically searched for the bombers. He was convicted of con- spiracy and obstruction of justice for agreeing with an- other friend to remove Tsar- naev's backpack from his dorm room at the Univer- sity of Massachusetts-Dart- mouth. The backpack con- tained fireworks that had been emptied of their ex- plosive powder. Later Friday, Robel Philli- pos was handed a three-year sentence for lying to the FBI about being in Tsarnaev's dorm room days after the bombings. The judge said Phillipos was to blame for a "substantial diversion" of law enforcement resources. "There's a price to be paid for the failure of re- sponsibility," Judge Doug- las Woodlock said. Prosecutors had asked for a sentence of a little more than five years in prison. Phillipos' lawyers had asked for two years of home con- finement. The sentence ul- timately given to Phillipos was the most lenient pen- alty imposed on the three friends who were charged. Dukakis, a friend of Phil- lipos' family and the 1988 Democratic presidential nominee, wrote a letter of support for him and even testified during his trial. In his letter to the judge, Dukakis wrote that he "can't understand why jus- tice would be served by in- carcerating him." The bombings on April 15, 2013, killed three people and injured more than 260. Tsarnaev is awaiting formal sentencing after a jury con- demned him to die for com- mitting the attack with his now-dead older brother, Ta- merlan. BOSTON 2 fri en ds o f marathon bomber get prison terms By Stephen Ohlemacher The Associated Press WASHINGTON Social Secu- rity overpaid disability ben- eficiaries by nearly $17 bil- lion over the past decade, a government watchdog said Friday, raising alarms about the massive program just as it approaches the brink of insolvency. Many payments went to people who earned too much money to qualify for benefits, or to those no lon- ger disabled. Payments also went to people who had died or were in prison. In all, nearly half of the 9 million people receiving disability payments were overpaid, according to the results of a 10-year study by the Social Security Admin- istration's inspector gen- eral. Social Security was able to recoup about $8.1 billion, but it often took years to get the money back, the study said. "Every dollar misal- located is a dollar lost for those who truly need it most," said Sen. Or- rin Hatch, R-Utah, chair- man of the Senate Finance Committee. "Today's re- port shows the inability of the Social Security Admin- istration to properly safe- guard payments, which has no doubt contributed to speeding the fund to- ward exhaustion." The trust fund that sup- ports Social Security's dis- ability program is projected to run out of money late next year, triggering auto- matic benefit cuts, unless Congress acts. The loom- ing deadline has lawmak- ers feuding over a solution that may have to come in the heat of a presidential election. The program's financial problems go beyond the is- sue of overpayments — So- cial Security disability has paid out more in bene- fits than it has collected in payroll taxes every year for the past decade. But con- cerns about waste, fraud and abuse are complicat- ing the debate in Congress over how to address the program's larger financial problems. The agency did not re- spond to a request for com- ment Friday. DISABILITY Report: SSA overpaid benefits by $17 billion By Ted Bridis, Ken Dilanian and Eric Tucker The Associated Press WASHINGTON The govern- ment is worried that hack- ers who raided more than 4 million federal employ- ment files will use their loot to pry into more-se- cure computers and plun- der secrets about the U.S. military, economic strat- egy or foreign relations. Federal officials said Friday the cyberattack ap- peared to have originated in China, but they didn't point fingers directly at the Chinese government. The Chinese said any such accusation would be "ir- responsible and unscien- tific." Federal employees were told in a video to change all their passwords, put fraud alerts on their credit reports and watch for at- tempts by foreign intelli- gence services to exploit them. That message came from Dan Payne, a senior counterintelligence official for the Director of National Intelligence. "Some of you may think that you are not of inter- est because you don't have access to classified infor- mation," he said. "You are mistaken." White House spokes- man Josh Earnest said he couldn't divulge much while the case was under investigation. One U.S. official said the breach was being investi- gated as a national secu- rity matter, suggesting authorities believe a na- tion was behind it rather than a more loosely orga- nized gang of cybercrimi- nals. The official was not authorized to discuss an ongoing investigation and spoke only on condition of anonymity. The break-in is an em- barrassing showing for the U.S. government's vaunted computer-de- fense system for civilian agencies — dubbed "Ein- stein" — which is cost- ing $376 million this year alone. It's supposed to de- tect unusual Internet traf- fic that might reflect hack- ing attempts or stolen data being transmitted outside the government. This latest breach oc- curred in December but wasn't discovered until April, officials say. It was made public Thursday. "The scale of it is just staggering,"saidRep.Adam Schiff, D-Calif., top Demo- crat on the House Intelli- gence Committee. There's no telling how many more attacks could be spawned by the information stolen in this case, he said. Although most Amer- icans think of identity thieves stealing from credit card or bank accounts, the information about civilian federal workers has other value for foreign spies. "They're able to iden- tify people who are in po- sitions with access to sig- nificant national security information and can use personal data to target those individuals," said Payne, the counterintelli- gence official. He said details from per- sonnel files could be used to craft personalized phony messages to trick workers. Federal employees who think they're opening an email from co-workers or family members might in- fect their computers with a program that would steal more information or in- stall spy software. GOVERNMENT BREACH Giant hack may be first step in pursuit of bigger US secrets SUSANWALSH—THEASSOCIATEDPRESS The Homeland Security Department headquarters in northwest Washington on Friday. By Mary Clare Jalonick The Associated Press WASHINGTON A Montana woman says her brother was sexually abused by for- mer House Speaker Dennis Hastert during the years when the GOP leader was a wrestling coach at a sub- urban Chicago high school. Jolene Burdge of Billings, Montana, told The Associ- ated Press on Thursday that the FBI interviewed her last month about Hastert, who was charged last week in a federal indictment alleg- ing that he agreed in 2010 to pay $3.5 million to some- one so that person would stay quiet about "prior mis- conduct." She said her brother told her before he died in 1995 that his first homosexual contact was with Hastert and that it lasted through- out his high school years. Stephen Reinboldt at- tended Yorkville High School, where Hastert was a history teacher and coach from 1965 to 1981. In an interview aired Friday on ABC's "Good Morning America," Burdge said Hastert had been a fa- ther figure to her brother but also caused him irrep- arable harm. "He damaged Steve, I think, more than any of us will ever know," she told the morning show. TheAPcouldnotindepen- dently verify her allegations. A person familiar with the allegations in the indict- ment has told the AP that the payments mentioned in the document were in- tended to conceal claims that the Illinois Republican sexually molested someone decades ago. The person spoke on the condition of anonymity because the in- vestigation is ongoing. Hastert has not been charged with sexual abuse. But Burdge's story indi- cates there could be more victims beyond the "Indi- vidual A" named in the in- dictment. Hastert did not respond to a message left on his cellphone Friday. Emails and phone messages sent to his son, Ethan Hastert, also went unanswered. An FBI spokeswoman declined to comment on Burdge's allegations. Reinboldt died in Los Angeles in 1995 at age 42. Burdge told ABC that he died of AIDS. He was a manager of the wrestling team that Hast- ert coached, the AP found. He was also manager of the football team, student coun- cil president and a member of the pep club, letterman's club, the French club and the yearbook staff. SPEAKER INDICTMENT Woman: Brother was sexually abused by Hastert Landscape/Fence Steve's Tractor &LandscapeService •FenceBuilding•Landscaping • Trenching • Rototilling • Disking • Mowing • Ridging • Post Hole Digging • Blade Work • Sprinkler Installation • Concrete Work Cont. 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