can't gunzip sources

[Tom Pimienta]

I am unable to extract the source tarballs.  I keep getting an error
that the files are not in gzip format.  

gzip: stdin: not in gzip format
tar: Child returned status 1
tar: Error exit delayed from previous errors

Also, I have been unable to match the posted MD5 digests ( I've tried
both md5 and sha1 digests and can't get a match ).

I'd like to build from sources.  I am running Debian Sarge on i86
platform.

Thanks in advance,
-Tom.