But the material also reflects divisions and uncertainties among intelligence agencies as to Saddam Hussein's activities.

The State Department, for instance, expressed deep skepticism over claims that Saddam was shopping for uranium ore in Africa to use in making atomic bombs - an allegation that wound up in Bush's Jan. 28 State of the Union address but which administration officials have since repudiated.

"Claims of Iraqi pursuit of natural uranium in Africa are... highly dubious," said a State Department addendum included among the declassified material.

The administration released the documents - a sanitized version of the top-secret National Intelligence Estimate prepared for the president - on Friday as it sought to shield Bush from rising criticism that he misled the public in making his case for war with Iraq.

Administration aides suggested that the eight pages of excerpts, out of 90 in the document, demonstrate the notion that Saddam was trying to reconstitute a nuclear weapons program permeated the U.S. intelligence community - and was not just based on a suspect British report that relied in part on forged documents.

White House spokesman Scott McClellan said the documents show "the clear and compelling case we had for confronting the threat that Saddam Hussein posed."