Washington ? The White House released internal documents Friday that it said bolstered its case that U.S. intelligence agencies had solid evidence Saddam Hussein was pursuing nuclear weapons several months prior to President Bush’s January State of the Union speech.

The documents contained declassified excerpts from an October 2002 “national intelligence estimate” on Iraq that warned, “If left unchecked, it probably will have a nuclear weapon during this decade.” More ominously, the document added, “If Baghdad acquires sufficient fissile material from abroad, it could make a nuclear weapon within several months to a year.”

National intelligence estimates are compiled by the director of central intelligence, George Tenet, from various intelligence agencies and submitted to the White House through the National Security Council, which is headed by Condoleezza Rice.

Bush has been struggling to fend off criticism of his use in the State of the Union speech of a British intelligence claim that Saddam had tried to buy uranium from Africa for weapons.

The CIA and the State Department raised doubts about the British intelligence report on Iraqi efforts to buy uranium before it was used by Bush, and the claim was found to be based in part on forged documents. Secretary of State Colin Powell deliberately made no reference to it in his presentation to the United Nations on the Iraqi threat a week after the State of the Union speech.

It is highly unusual for an administration to release excerpts from a national intelligence estimate, and the Bush White House has been especially protective of presidential secrecy. The decision to distribute the material suggests the pressure the White House is feeling to demonstrate that its prewar claims about Iraqi weapons were based on solid information.

The intelligence estimate dwelt heavily on Saddam’s purchase of aluminum tubes and other manufacturing equipment as evidence of a nuclear weapons program.

“Most agencies believe that Saddam’s personal interest in, and Iraq’s aggressive attempts to obtain, high-strength aluminum tubes for centrifuge rotors — as well as Iraq’s attempts to acquire magnets, high-speed balancing machines and machine tools — provide compelling evidence that Saddam is reconstituting uranium enrichment efforts for Baghdad’s nuclear weapons program,” the document said.

Still, the excerpts revealed a split within the administration. The State Department’s intelligence agency found the evidence of an Iraqi nuclear program far less compelling than the intelligence community as a whole, the excerpts showed.

The State Department’s assistant secretary for intelligence and research (INR) agreed that Saddam was “pursuing at least a limited effort” to acquire nuclear weapons.

“The activities we have detected do not, however, add up to a compelling case that Iraq is currently pursuing what INR would consider to be an integrated and comprehensive approach to acquire nuclear weapons,” said an excerpt from the State Department. “Iraq may be doing so, but INR considers the available evidence inadequate to support such a judgment.”

In addition, the Energy Department questioned whether the aluminum tubes that Saddam had purchased were in fact intended for a nuclear program, a question other analysts also have raised. The document noted that the Energy Department “agrees that reconstitution of the nuclear program is under way, but assesses that the tubes probably are not part of the program.”

Moreover, the head of the U.N.’s International Atomic Energy Agency, Mohamed ElBaradei, said after Bush’s State of the Union address that the tubes appeared to be intended for conventional rockets, even though, with modifications, they could be used to enrich uranium.

Bush and British Prime Minister Tony Blair declared at a joint news conference Thursday that their decision to go to war was based on sound intelligence and that neither has doubts that Saddam was pursuing weapons of mass destruction that included nuclear arms.

Except for two abandoned laboratory trailers, U.S. forces occupying Iraq have found no evidence of nuclear weapons or the chemical and biological weapons that Bush cited in his call for war.

The Washington Post reported Friday that the State Department had received copies of the forged documents purporting to show Iraq’s attempted uranium purchase three months before the State of the Union address.

Although it distributed them to the CIA and other government agencies within a few days, the newspaper said, it did not turn them over to U.N. weapons inspectors for another four months, even though the inspectors had requested them.

Last week, Tenet took the blame for the “mistake” of not requesting the removal of the African uranium claim from the State of the Union address, although this week he said he was not given a copy of the speech before Bush delivered it.

The documents released Friday suggest that, as the White House has said, the assertion that Iraq was rebuilding its nuclear program was based on sources other than the forged documents. “Iraq’s efforts to re-establish and enhance its cadre of weapons personnel, as well as activities at several suspect nuclear sites, further indicate that reconstitution is under way,” the excerpts said.