White House press secretary admits she didn't know what Cuban Missile Crisis was

History has a way of repeating itself.

White House press secretary Dana Perino has been front and center of the White House's push to continue to label Iran a rogue state for its pursuit of uranium enrichment technology.

This comes against the backdrop of a new intelligence estimate positing that the Islamic state abandoned its nuclear weapons in 2003.

Turns out she doesn't know quite so much about nuclear weapons as she supposes. And we're not talking about Iran.

Appearing on National Public Radio's quiz show, "Wait, Wait ... Don't Tell Me," this weekend, Perino admitted a story she'd previously only shared in private: When a reporter asked her a question during a White House briefing in which he referred to the Cuban Missile Crisis -- she didn't know what it was.

"I was panicked a bit because I really don't know about . . . the Cuban Missile Crisis," said Perino, who at 35 was born about a decade after the 1962 U.S.-Soviet nuclear showdown. "It had to do with Cuba and missiles, I'm pretty sure."

The exchange was first noted in the Washington Post.

"I came home and I asked my husband," she said on air. "I said, 'Wasn't that like the Bay of Pigs thing?' And he said, 'Oh, Dana.' "

Perino was referring to the White House briefing held on October 26, when a reporter asked her, "Do you want to address the remarks by President Putin, who said the United States setting up a missile defense shield in Eastern Europe was like the Soviet Union putting missiles in Cuba, setting up a Cuban missile crisis?"

"Well, I think that the historical comparison is not -- does not exactly work," Perino had responded.

FULL AUDIO CLIP CAN BE HEARD AT THIS LINK



