Governor Pataki’s decision to abort plans for a museum of freedom at ground zero was condemned yesterday by board members of the Lower Manhattan Development Corporation, the state agency in charge of rebuilding the former World Trade Center site.

The International Freedom Center came under fire this summer from the family members of victims of the September 11, 2001, attacks, along with the city’s police and firefighters unions. They feared that the museum, which aimed to tie the events of September 11 to a historical movement toward freedom around the globe, would contain offensive or overly political material. When the governor announced last week that the freedom center would no longer be welcome on the memorial quadrant, the museum’s organizers abruptly ended its mission.

The chairman of the LMDC, John Whitehead, a Pataki appointee to the board, said yesterday at a public meeting, “Most of our board, including its chairman, were quite distressed that a process which we had established two years ago with full public approval was not allowed to work its way through to conclusion.”

Several LMDC board members sug gested that the governor’s sudden and decisive intervention threatened to make the board irrelevant. Mr. Whitehead said the board’s future effectiveness would be uncertain “unless we are seen by others to have the necessary authority to make the decisions.”

Another board member, Roland Betts, called Mr. Pataki’s decision “a debacle.”

“We have denied ourselves freedom of expression at ground zero,” Mr. Betts said. He is also a business partner of the freedom center organization’s president, Thomas Bernstein.

“There’s no question that the LMDC has been deeply wounded,” Mr. Betts said. “We need to call upon the governor and the mayor to reaffirm their commitment to this institution.”

Visibly frustrated, Mr. Betts said after the meeting that Mr. Pataki had not communicated with any board members before making his decision.

A spokeswoman for the governor, Joanna Rose, said in a statement yesterday afternoon, “The Governor respects the work of the LMDC board and continues to view their role as central to the rebuilding efforts.”

Only one of 10 LMDC board members, Robert Harding, defended the governor’s decision. Mr. Harding suggested it would have been impossible to ensure that the museum’s “freedom of expression” did not allow for content that would desecrate the site.

The Norwegian architectural firm Snohetta designed a building at ground zero specifically to house the freedom center and the Drawing Center, an art gallery that is now looking for space elsewhere.

The 200,000- to 300,000-square-foot space was estimated to cost between $200 million and $300 million, most of which its tenants were going to pick up.

The president of the LMDC, Stefan Pryor, said yesterday that the board had “very active communication” with several cultural institutions over the possible use of the Snohetta building.

A former executive director of the Republican state committee, Brendan Quinn, said Mr. Pataki’s decision to pull the plug on the freedom center followed closely on threats by Reps. John Sweeney, Peter King and Vito Fossella, all of whom represent New York, to hold congressional hearings over the use of federal funds for the project.

Nationally televised hearings on the freedom center, Mr. Quinn said, “would be a huge embarrassment” for Mr. Pataki, who traveled to Iowa recently in what many characterized as a test run for a possible presidential bid in 2008.