Gov. Deval Patrick pulled the plug on a planned UMass speech by a convicted terrorist yesterday after a plea delivered by the Herald from the outraged widow of a gunned-down state trooper - angering cops who protested the event for weeks.

“It was absolutely disgusting that we had to go through what we had to go through to get this canceled,” said widow Donna Lamonaco. “Police groups have been complaining for weeks. We organized a protest.

“We got nothing until the newspaper calls the governor?” she said. “It’s a disgrace.”

Lamonaco’s husband, Phil, a New Jersey state trooper, was shot dead by members of the United Freedom Front in 1981.

The radical group, also cited for the attempted assassination of two Massachusetts troopers and a rash of bombings and robberies, was led by Raymond Luc Levasseur.

Levasseur - now living under federal parole in a halfway house in Maine and still hailed by followers as a political prisoner - was set to speak at a “Colloquium on Social Change” at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst next Thursday.

“They were treating a terrorist as a hero. The governor was going to let him educate college students at a public school, a guy who represents an organization that killed my husband, that tried to execute two troopers in Massachusetts,” said Lamonaco, mother of three.

“The United Freedom Front stood for violence and anarchy against the United States. The governor seemed like he wanted to celebrate that?”

After the Herald sought comment from Patrick on the widow’s plea yesterday, UMass canceled the speech and the governor issued a statement applauding the decision as “the right thing to do out of respect to the families of the victims of these acts and our law enforcement community.”

Tom Nee, president of the National Association of Police and the Boston Police Patrolmen’s Association, said Patrick bowed only after the threat of public embarrassment from a Herald story.

“The governor should be ashamed,” Nee said. “Once again, there was an utter disregard shown for law enforcement.”

A spokesman for the governor said Patrick’s office first contacted UMass about the speech Wednesday, then followed up with a call yesterday. The spokesman said the governor was not aware of the widow’s plea until the Herald call - and was never contacted by a police union about the controversy.

Police union officials said Patrick ignored their requests that the convicted terrorist not be allowed into Massachusetts.

“It’s hugely offensive that a state school that receives tax dollars would invite Lavasseur,” said Richard R. Brown, president of the State Police Association of Massachusetts. “This guy committed atrocities against our country and the talk was only canceled under pressure.”

The United Freedom Front was responsible for roughly 20 bombings, including one at the Suffolk County Courthouse in Boston, and for the attempted murder of two Massachusetts State Troopers, Mike Crosby and Paul Landry, in a blazing North Attleboro gun battle in 1982.

Levasseur was released from prison in 2004 after serving 18 years of a 45-year sentence on bombing and conspiracy charges.