WASHINGTON (AP): After his capture, Saddam Hussein told the FBI that he falsely allowed the world to believe Iraq had weapons of mass destruction because he feared revealing his weakness to Iran, the hostile neighbor he considered a bigger threat than the U.S.

Saddam also dismissed Osama bin Laden as a ``zealot,'' said he had never personally met the al-Qaida leader and that the Iraqi government didn't cooperate with the terrorist group against the U.S., according to FBI interview notes made public by the National Security Archive, a non-governmental research institute.

The institute obtained the FBI summaries through a Freedom of Information Act request and posted them on its Web site Wednesday.

The former Iraqi leader was interviewed by the FBI after he was captured in December 2003, nine months after the U.S. and its allies invaded Iraq. He was later transferred to Iraqi custody and was hanged in December 2006.