Plaintiff, a non-veteran formerly employed by the Federal Aviation Agency, claims that she was unlawfully removed on December 29, 1961, on a charge of making malicious statements concerning other employees of the Agency. She does *654 not contest, in this court, that she typed and sent anonymous letters to an official of the Agency stating that a fellow employee “can not be trusted, lies all the time”, “holds personal grudges”, is “rotten” and “a professional liar”, and a similar anonymous letter to the wife of another Agency official stating that the recipient’s husband “carries on” and “makes a fool of himself” with a female fellow employee who is “nothing but a cheap, brazen hussy” “only using him to get ahead.”
Plaintiff’s first contention is that she could not be disciplined or removed on this charge unless the agency determined that the statements in her letters were in fact false. We reject this argument. The sending of anonymous letters of this type to superiors, to fellow employees, and certainly to the wife of a fellow employee, is, in itself, good cause for removal under the Lloyd-LaFollette Act, 5 U.S.C. § 652(a), regardless of whether the anonymous accusations, phrased as these were, have any element of truth. These were not open or responsible accusations of official misconduct, properly and temperately made to the cognizant persons, but were snide and intemperate name-calling attacks in unsigned letters — one of them to the wife of a fellow employee plaintiff accused, in effect, of breaking his marriage vows. Such communications have no place, no sanction, and no privilege in federal employment. It promotes the efficiency of the government service to discipline employees using these methods. Cf. Houston v. United States,
The plaintiff’s second point is that her removal was procedurally defective because the employing agency failed to follow the requirements of the LloydLaFollette Act and of its own regulations. She has no standing to make this contention because she failed to pursue and exhaust her remedy before the Civil Service Commission; exhaustion of this remedy, to the extent that it is available, is a normal prerequisite to suit in this, court. Martilla v. United States,
Plaintiff’s excuse for not seeking Commission review is that, even after her removal on December 29, 1961, she had pending an appeal from the Assistant Administrator to the Administrator of the Federal Aviation Agency. The latter did not deny her appeal until April 9, 1962 — too late for an appeal to the Commission under its rules. However,' there is no indication here, unlike the Morelli case, supra, that a timely appeal to the Commission would have aborted the internal appeal to the Administrator, or vice versa. Both could have been pursued at the same time. The alleged procedural defects on which plaintiff relies all occurred before her removal and could therefore have been presented to the Commission, as well as to the Administrator.
In any event, we find no merit in the charges of procedural irregularity, which focus on the Agency’s failure to inform plaintiff of all the materials considered by the Field Board of Grievance Appeals and the Assistant Administrator, and to confront her with any witnesses against her. The Lloyd-LaFollette Act and the Commission regulations did not give these rights to non-veterans. Culligan v. United States,
Plaintiff’s motion for summary judgment is denied, and defendant’s cross-motion is granted. The petition is dismissed.