The following correction was printed in the Guardian's Corrections and clarifications column, Thursday 20 August 2009

Reporting on interview notes released by the FBI, the article below recounted various things Saddam Hussein told an FBI agent who questioned him extensively in 2004. Interpreting the notes, it was said: "[Saddam] allowed the world to believe Iraq had weapons of mass destruction because he feared revealing a weakness to Iran". At one point said we said, "[Saddam] kept up his bluster about weapons of mass destruction in order to appear strong in front of Iran". To be clear, what the FBI agent's original note says is: "Even though Hussein claimed Iraq did not have WMD, the threat from Iran was the major factor as to why he did not allow the return of the UN inspectors."

Saddam Hussein remained preoccupied with the threat from neighbouring Iran as the US-led invasion loomed and would have sought a security pact with the US if UN sanctions were lifted, he told an FBI interviewer in his jail cell before his execution.

In more than two dozen interviews and casual talks, the deposed Iraqi leader told FBI questioners that he refused to allowed UN inspectors to re-enter the country because he feared they would reveal to his chief adversary Iran the severely degraded state of Iraq's weapons capability.

Saddam, whom the successor Iraqi government hanged in December 2006, also denied having any connection to Osama bin Laden or al-Qaida, and said that if he wanted to join forces with a US enemy, he would have sought a pact with North Korea or China.

Those details and others are revealed in newly released FBI reports of contacts between the jailed Hussein and FBI special agent George Piro, an Arabic speaker who met with the former Iraqi leader between February and June 2004.

The reports portray a deposed dictator who seems comfortable discussing subjects from Iraqi history to his daily work schedule and speechwriting practices with an investigator from the country that forced him from power. Hussein seems aware that he is to die soon, and justifies his record of modernising Iraq and surviving more than a decade of conflict with Iran and the US and crippling UN sanctions.

The reports were released by the National Security Archive, a Washington group that obtained them from the FBI. The reports contain a few deletions, and one interview, from May 1, 2004, was redacted in its entirety.

Saddam denounced bin Laden as a "zealot". The former Iraqi leader described himself as a religious man and appears at least superficially pious, referring constantly to God and to Islam. But he said he believed religion and government "should not mix", and said he and bin Laden do not share the same vision.

Although he had been deposed by the American army and seemed to understand he would soon be handed over to the Iraqis and executed, Saddam remained fixated on what he describes as Iran's threat to Iraq. The two nations fought a brutal war between 1980 and 1988, costing as many as one million lives. He said that in recent years sanctions and UN inspections had degraded Iraq's military capability while Iran had strengthened its armed forces.

He said that during the run-up to the US invasion in March 2003, he kept up his bluster about weapons of mass destruction in order to appear strong in front of Iran. Saddam said he believed Iran intended to annex majority Shia areas of southern Iraq, and saw the country as the greatest threat to Iraq. He said he viewed the other Arab countries in the region as weak and unable to defend against an attack from Iran. He said that he refused to allow UN inspectors to re-enter the country not because he still possessed prohibited weapons of mass destruction (he ordered the stock pile destroyed after the 1991 Persian Gulf war) but because he wanted Iran to believe he did.

"Hussein stated he was more concerned about Iran discovering Iraq's weaknesses and vulnerabilities than the repercussions of the United States for his refusal to allow UN inspectors back into Iraq," the report of a June 11, 2004 interview states.

Asked how Iraq would have dealt with Iran if the UN inspections and sanctions were ended, he said he would have sought a security agreement with the US. Piro agreed such an arrangement would have benefited Iraq, but said the US would not quickly have made such a pact. He told Piro he wanted a more friendly relationship with the US, an ally during the war with Iran, but that the US "was not listening to anything Iraq had to say".

Hussein declined several times to answer questions about his use of chemical weapons in the war with Iran. The FBI interviewers at one point show him a British-made documentary called "Saddam's Latest War", which offers evidence of atrocities and mass executions of Shia Iraqis. Saddam grew agitated and challenged the accuracy and neutrality of the journalist.

Hussein described a strict security regimen in the years before the US-led invasion. He said he had only spoken on the telephone twice since March 1990 and never stayed in the same location for more than a day, fearful that high-tech US surveillance would locate him. He said that the farm on which US soldiers discovered him in December 2003 was the same place to which he fled after taking part in a failed 1959 coup attempt.

The former Iraqi leader offered a few personal details. In one discussion, during which the cell's air conditioning was under repair, Hussein told Piro he was used to living a simple lifestyle. Asked to explain his numerous, extravagant palaces, Hussein said they were created as exercises for Iraqi architects and to keep enemies from pinpointing the location of top regime officials during meetings. Hussein also said he typically would try to take time out of his work schedule to read fiction, "something he enjoyed very much".

He said he had been keen to learn more about American culture, and had done so by watching Hollywood films.

He said he took time every day to meet with ordinary Iraqis, but acknowledged to Piro that many would be too frightened to be candid with him.

Saddam was apparently aware that he did not have much longer to live. At one point Piro expressly reminds him that he is no longer president of Iraq, that he is "done", and that his life is nearing an end.

Piro "asked him if he wanted the remainder of his life to have meaning, to which he responded yes".