WASHINGTON — Armed with recently disclosed British documents, a group of congressional Democrats conducted an "unofficial hearing" yesterday accusing the Bush administration of "fixing" intelligence to justify the Iraq war.

Rep. John Conyers, D-Mich., who called the forum, said the documents "establish a prima facie case of going to war under false pretenses."

The current debate revolves around the so-called "Downing Street memo," a leaked British government memo published by the Sunday Times of London on May 1, in the final days of Prime Minister Tony Blair's re-election campaign.

The memo — the minutes of Blair's meeting July 23, 2002, about eight months before the Iraq invasion — referred to talks in Washington, where "military action was now seen as inevitable."

"Bush wanted to remove Saddam, through military action, justified by the conjunction of terrorism and WMD," the minutes said. The minutes also said: "There was little discussion in Washington of the aftermath after military action."

In the weeks since publication, some Bush critics have pushed the minutes as a "smoking gun." Others disagree, noting that the minutes and other leaked documents show that American and British officials sincerely believed Saddam had weapons of mass destruction.

The Democrats who gathered yesterday said they would hold more hearings, though they lack subpoena power because they are in the minority. They conducted the first session in a Capitol basement room.

White House officials noted that all the Democrats who attended the hearing opposed the war and that the administration had good reason to believe Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction and posed a significant threat.

"This is simply rehashing old debates," said White House press secretary Scott McClellan.

The forum featured former Ambassador Joseph Wilson, whose 2003 newspaper opinion piece criticizing the Bush administration's claim that Iraq had sought uranium in Niger forced a White House retraction; a former CIA official who accused the administration of exaggerating Iraqi intelligence; the mother of a serviceman killed in Iraq; and an attorney who said Congress should investigate the memos for possible impeachment charges.

Conyers and some of his colleagues later delivered to the White House what they estimated were more than 550,000 requests for more information about the memo.