NASA can land a man on the moon, but it can't seem to land a commercial flight to Los Angeles for its administrator.

That's the irony of a highly sensitive draft audit report of aircraft management at NASA. The report, conducted by NASA's inspector general, says NASA officials wasted $5.9 million in fiscal year 1993 by flying around the world on NASA aircraft instead of commercial flights.NASA administrator Daniel S. Goldin's name is omitted from the scathing report, but other internal NASA documents we've obtained show that Goldin is in the middle of the maelstrom. Flight logs for Goldin's 18 trips in one six-month period show that the trips cost taxpayers $514,000 more than if he had flown commercial.

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-Jack Anderson and Michael Binstein

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