Board Chairman John Whitehead, a Pataki appointee, said the panel won't be effective ``unless we are seen by others as having the necessary authority to make decisions.'' Whitehead and other members called on Pataki and Mayor Michael Bloomberg to reaffirm the agency's power over the rebuilding process.

The board went public with its anger at Pataki eight days after the governor cut short the panel's reappraisal of plans for an International Freedom Center in a cultural building to be built at Ground Zero. On Sept. 28, Pataki announced the museum ``cannot be located on the memorial quadrant'' of the site. Museum organizers, who had faced months of opposition from some families of Sept. 11 victims, called it quits.

Had Pataki held off, the board would have taken up the museum's fate at its meeting today, after museum planners had a chance to present their side at two public forums.

`There's no question that the LMDC has been deeply wounded,'' said Roland Betts, another Pataki appointee, during this morning's meeting. ``We need to call upon the governor and the mayor to reaffirm their commitment to this institution, to reaffirm its role in the planning process and to assure us in a meaningful way that the efforts of that planning will not be wasted and will be respected.''

`Name-Calling'

Betts is partners with Tom Bernstein, the freedom center's co-founder, in Chelsea Piers, a Manhattan recreational complex. Both are friends with President George W. Bush.

A Pataki spokeswoman, Joanna Rose, said she would need to consult the governor before responding. A spokeswoman for Bloomberg, Jennifer Falk, said the mayor would release a statement in response later today.

In a rare moment for the board, which usually approves resolutions proposed by its staff with little to no comment, all 10 members spoke with varying degrees of criticism of the process that killed the freedom center. Only one, Robert Harding, the last member appointed by former Mayor Rudolph Giuliani, said he favored the outcome, though he denounced the ``vitriolic name-calling'' that preceded it.

Board members said some freedom center opponents, asserting the museum would be forum for anti-American messages, besmirched the patriotism of Bernstein and other supporters.

Bernstein Defended

``A groundswell of rumor and innuendo was applied to what the IFC intended to do, which had no basis in fact whatsoever,'' Betts said. ``And we as a board let that get out of hand. The ad hominem attacks on Tom Bernstein were so inappropriate and so unfair. I've been Tom's partner for 25 years, and there's nobody who's more patriotic. Tom's only interest was serving his country.''

In the June 8 Wall Street Journal essay that sparked the ``Take Back the Memorial'' movement, author Debra Burlingame criticized Bernstein for his leadership of Human Rights First, of which he has been president for the last 12 years.

``The public has a right to know that it was Mr. Bernstein's organization that filed a lawsuit three months ago against Donald Rumsfeld,'' the U.S. secretary of defense, ``on behalf of detainees in Iraq and Afghanistan,'' wrote Burlingame, whose brother was a pilot of the plane that crashed into the Pentagon on Sept. 11, 2001.

She said that Bernstein had filled the freedom center's advisory panel with ``a who's who of the human rights, Guantanamo-obsessed world.''

`Too Much Opposition'

A call to Burlingame today wasn't immediately returned.

The criticisms were picked up in newspaper editorials, on radio talk shows and on Web sites. When Pataki blocked the project, he said there was ``too much opposition, too much controversy.''

Whitehead, former co-chair of Goldman Sachs Group Inc. and a deputy secretary of state in the Reagan administration, ordered the freedom center in August to present a plan to assure that its exhibits and programs wouldn't mar the sanctity of the memorial. The center released that document on Sept. 22.

``Regrettable and dangerous rhetoric was thrown about irresponsibly,'' Whitehead said today.

Members of the Take Back the Memorial coalition who attended the meeting said the criticisms were misplaced. Charles Wolf, a Sept. 11 widower, alluded to Pataki's support in his announcement for finding an alternate site for the museum, either elsewhere on Ground Zero outside the memorial section, or just off the site, a position that many family members supported.

``The IFC didn't want that,'' he said. ``They pulled their own plug.''

The mayor, who also appoints members of the development corporation, is founder and majority owner of Bloomberg News parent Bloomberg LP. Bloomberg said after the freedom center's demise that ``although I understand Governor Pataki's decision, I am disappointed that we were not able to find a way to reconcile the freedoms we hold so dear with the sanctity of the site.''

To contact the reporter on this story:
David M. Levitt in New York at dlevitt@bloomberg.net.
Last Updated: October 6, 2005 14:37 EDT