Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich touted the virtues of Freddie Mac’s business model in an interview published by the company in April 2007, remarks that contrast with the candidate’s recent statements that he had warned the company of impending financial disaster.

The interview was featured on Freddie Mac’s website for several months in 2007 when he was a paid consultant to the company and Freddie Mac was struggling to address mounting financial problems as the housing boom was turning to bust.

At the time, critics were complaining that Freddie Mac and its larger cousin, Fannie Mae, benefited from an unfair competitive advantage because of the perception their debt had an implicit government guarantee. That allowed the mortgage-finance companies, formerly known as government-sponsored enterprises, or GSEs, to borrow at lower rates than private-sector competitors.

“While we need to improve the regulation of the GSEs, I would be very cautious about fundamentally changing their role or the model itself,” Mr. Gingrich said in the website interview.

Pressed in the interview about how that was not “a point of view one normally associates with conservatives,” Mr. Gingrich replied that there are times “when you need government to help spur private enterprise and economic development.” He cited electricity and telephone network expansion as similarly effective private-public purposes. “It’s not a point of view libertarians would embrace, but I am more in the Alexander Hamilton-Teddy Roosevelt tradition of conservatism,” he said. He added, “I’m convinced that if NASA were a GSE, we probably would be on Mars today.”

The interview was published by Freddie Mac as part of a regular campaign to educate the public—and Washington—about its brand. It appeared beneath a section entitled “Freddie Mac and the Subprime Market,” and was composed by Freddie Mac based on Mr. Gingrich’s discussions with the company as well as his writings about the role of government. The blog Verum Serum found that the transcript is accessible on an archived version of Freddie Mac’s website.

A spokesman for Mr. Gingrich, Joe DeSantis, said the 2007 interview showed Mr. Gingrich arguing for improved regulation of Freddie and Fannie. He said the interview “directly contradicts the erroneous reports” that Mr. Gingrich was trying to stop reforms to Fannie and Freddie.

As a presidential candidate this year, Mr. Gingrich has said government guarantees to Fannie and Freddie should be severed. He said the companies grew too big and that they should be broken into smaller firms. “The total collapse of the global financial system has a tendency to make one look at a situation with a fresh set of eyes,” Mr. DeSantis said.

A Freddie Mac spokesman declined to comment.

Mr. Gingrich earned more than $1.6 million during two stints as a Freddie Mac consultant from 1999 to 2008, according to people familiar with the matter.

The government took over Fannie and Freddie in September 2008. The rescues so far have cost taxpayers around $151 billion.

Freddie and Fannie are deeply unpopular with some conservatives, and Mr. Gingrich has joined fellow Republicans in singling them out as causes of the financial crisis. He has said that lobbyists and members of Congress are also to blame.

Mr. Gingrich has vaulted to the top of the Republican primary field in recent weeks, with the most recent Gallup tracking poll showing him in a virtual tie with former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney. But the lucrative consulting business that the former House speaker established after retiring from Congress in 1999 remains a potential liability at a time of growing disenchantment with Washington and Wall Street.

“While Fannie and Freddie were ruining the housing market and causing millions of homeowners to lose their homes and life savings, Newt Gingrich was earning millions advising them and advocating for them,” said Gary Howard, a spokesman for Rep. Ron Paul of Texas, another GOP presidential candidate. “Now, Newt wants to deny the facts of his role in the whole mess. Unfortunately for him, the facts are right there for everyone to see.”

Tim Albrecht, an aide to Iowa Republican Gov. Terry Branstad, said news about Mr. Gingrich’s work for Freddie Mac hasn’t hurt him in the first nominating state, because the stories are too complicated to lend themselves to easy attacks. “If a rival campaign is able to sum up a powerful argument on it in 30 seconds, it could begin to dent Newt,” Mr. Albrecht said. “Thus far, voters have been extremely forgiving of any revelations from his past.”

During the 2008 campaign, Mr. Gingrich suggested that a candidate’s ties to Fannie and Freddie were an important political issue. He told Fox News that Sen. John McCain, then the Republican nominee, should have made a bigger issue of campaign contributions that then-Sen. Barack Obama received from executives at Fannie and Freddie.

Pressed on his Freddie Mac consulting relationship at a debate last month, Mr. Gingrich said he provided “advice as a historian” and told the company when he learned it was “making loans to people who have no credit history” that “this is a bubble. This is insane.”

The Freddie interview doesn’t show him expressing such concerns. Fannie and Freddie “have made an important contribution to homeownership and the housing finance system,” Mr. Gingrich is quoted as saying in the interview presented in a question-and-answer format. “We have a much more liquid and stable housing finance system than we would have without the [companies].”

Write to Nick Timiraos at nick.timiraos@wsj.com