RELENTLESS MORAL CRUSADER IS RELENTLESS GAMBLER

WASHINGTON, May 2 -- William J. Bennett, author of "The Book of Virtues"
and one of the nation's most relentless moral crusaders, is a high-rolling
gambler who has lost more than $8 million at casinos in the last decade,
according to online reports from two magazines.

The Washington Monthly said on its Web site that "over the last decade
Bennett has made dozens of trips to casinos in Atlantic City and Las Vegas,
where he is a 'preferred customer' at several of them, and sources and
documents provided to The Washington Monthly put his total losses at more
than $8 million."

In an article that depends on much the same reporting, the online version
of Newsweek said that 40 pages of internal casino documents show that Mr.
Bennett received treatment typical of high-stakes gamblers, including
limousines and "tens of thousands of dollars in complimentary hotel rooms
and other amenities."

Mr. Bennett, who has served Republican presidents as education secretary
and drug czar, declined to be interviewed today by The New York Times, with
a spokesman saying that he needed to digest the articles before responding.

The fact of Mr. Bennett's gambling is not new. He has said over the years
that he likes to gamble and that it relaxes him. What is unusual is the
apparent extent of his losses; neither magazine reported his winnings.

Mr. Bennett told the magazines that he has basically broken even over the
years. "I play fairly high stakes," he said, adding, "I don't put my family
at risk, and I don't owe anyone anything."

The magazines said they had no documentation that he was in debt but
suggested that he had lost more than he had won. In response, Mr. Bennett
is quoted as saying, "I've made a lot of money and I've won a lot of
money," adding, "You don't see what I walk away with." He said he gave some
of his winnings to charity and reported everything to the Internal Revenue
Service.

The magazines said that in one two-month period, Mr. Bennett wired one
casino more than $1.4 million to cover his losses.

The magazines say he earns $50,000 for each appearance in speaking fees on
the lecture circuit, where he inveighs against various sins, weaknesses and
vices of modern culture.

But Mr. Bennett exempts gambling from this list.

He has said in the past that he does not consider gambling a moral issue.
When his interviewers reminded him of studies that link heavy gambling with
a variety of societal and family ills, Mr. Bennett said he did not have a
problem himself and likened gambling to drinking alcohol.

"I view it as drinking," he said. "If you can't handle it, don't do it."

Mr. Bennett is popular among social conservatives, but many of them
consider gambling a serious problem. James C. Dobson, the president of
Focus on the Family and a member of a federal commission that studied
gambling, said in 1999: "Gambling fever now threatens the work ethic and
the very foundation of the family. Thirty years ago, gambling was widely
understood in the culture to be addictive, progressive and dangerous."

In the 1990's, leaders of the conservative Christian Coalition joined with
other religious leaders to create the National Coalition Against Legalized
Gambling. Ralph Reed, former executive director of the Christian Coalition,
called gambling "a cancer on the American body politic" that was "stealing
food from the mouths of children."

Friends of Mr. Bennett were reluctant today to criticize him directly.

"It's his own money and his own business," Grover G. Norquist, president of
Americans for Tax Reform, a conservative advocacy group, said. "The
downside of gambling losses is that the government gets a third of the
money, which is unfortunate and probably a sin in and of itself," said Mr.
Norquist, whose group advocates smaller government.

William Kristol, editor of The Weekly Standard and another conservative
ally of Mr. Bennett, agreed that this was a matter between Mr. Bennett, his
wife and his accountant.

"It would be different if he had written anti-gambling screeds," Mr.
Kristol said. "I'm sure he doesn't regard gambling as a virtue but as a
rather minor and pardonable vice and a legal one and one that has not
damaged him or anyone else."

Mr. Kristol said that Mr. Bennett was not being hypocritical. "If Bill
Bennett went on TV encouraging young people to gamble the rent money at a
Las Vegas casino or was shilling for gambling interests, that would be
inconsistent" with his moral crusades, Mr. Kristol said.

As Mr. Bennett told The Las Vegas Review-Journal in 1995, "I've played
poker all my life and I shouldn't be on my high horse about it."