William 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 Bennett received treatment typical of high-stakes gamblers, including limousines and "tens of thousands of dollars in complimentary hotel rooms and other amenities."

Bennett declined to be interviewed Friday by The New York Times, with a spokesman saying that he needed to digest the articles before responding.

The fact of 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.

Bennett told the magazines that he has basically broken even over the years.

"I play fairly high stakes," he said, but added, "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, 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 Bennett once wired a casino more than $1.4 million over two months to cover his losses.

The magazines said he earns $50,000 in speaking fees for each appearance on the lecture circuit, where he inveighs against what he sees as the sins, weaknesses and vices of modern culture. But Bennett exempts gambling from this list.

He has said 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, 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."

Bennett, a former secretary of education, is popular among social conservatives, but many of them consider gambling a serious problem. James 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."

During the 1990s, leaders of the conservative Christian Coalition joined with other religious leaders to create the National Coalition Against Legalized Gambling. Ralph Reed, the 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 Bennett were reluctant Friday to criticize him directly. "It's his own money and his own business," said Grover Norquist, the president of Americans for Tax Reform, a conservative advocacy group. "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 Norquist, whose group advocates smaller government.