Bennett Quits as Anti-Drug Czar : Politics: He uses his resignation announcement to blast former D.C. Mayor Barry and dispel rumors about his departure.

William J. Bennett stepped down today as President Bush’s anti-drug abuse chief and took a swipe at convicted cocaine user Mayor Marion Barry for making his job harder because “he was part of the problem.”

Bennett said that as head of the Office of National Drug Control Strategy, he devoted special attention and resources to the District of Columbia, not to make it a showcase but because it was “a basket case.”

President Bush, accepting Bennett’s resignation, said he had done a “superb job for this country” in fighting the war against drugs.

Bennett said he is leaving government to become a fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, a conservative think tank.

As to speculation he might seek public office, the outspoken conservative said, “Not any time soon.”

With his trademark feistiness, Bennett said he wanted to dispel rumors he was leaving out of unhappiness.

“So far I have read that I am bored, restive, restless, tired, unhappy, moping about lack of media attention, sulking about not being in the Cabinet, in a snit with John Sununu, all sorts of things . . . and being stampeded out of town.”

Bennett said that “there are people who don’t like me” but that “I’m not the stampeded-out-of-town type.”

When asked how Barry’s cocaine problems affected the Bush Administration’s efforts on drugs, Bennett said:.

“Did the fact that the mayor used cocaine and crack make it easier or harder? It made it harder,” he said. “You got a real serious problem when the chief executive officer of the city that has a drug problem is taking crack.”

He said, however, he did not “find any hard evidence that would have held up in a court of law” about Barry’s drug use.

Bennett also said that a frequent critic of his drug policy, Rep. Charles B. Rangel (D-N.Y.), chairman of the House Select Committee on Narcotics Abuse and Control, “is a gas bag. He has nothing to do with drug policy.”