Amoretta Hoeber

Amoretta Hoeber, an advisor to the Frank Gaffney-run Center for Security Policy, runs a small Maryland-based defense consultancy firm. Hoeber is a former Reagan-era defense official who has been closely aligned with militarist factions in U.S. politics since the 1970s, when she served on the board of the Committee on the Present Danger (CPD), a hawkish anti-Soviet group that was led in part by neoconservatives like Norman Podhoretz and Midge Decter. After the 9/11 terrorist attacks, Hoeber joined the most recent incarnation of the CPD, which pushes hardline U.S. policies in the “war on terror” and is supported by several congressional figures and former government officials, including honorary CPD co-chairmen Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-CT), Sen. Jon Kyl (R-AZ), and former CIA head James Woolsey.
 
Hoeber founded AMH Consulting in 1991, shortly after leaving her position as director of strategic planning at TRW Environmental Safety Systems, a subsidiary of TRW, a major military contractor that has since merged with Northrop Grumman (which has been an AMH client). Other AMH clients have included AlliedSignal, Arete, Battelle, Bechtel, Booz Allen & Hamilton, Cogema, DynCorp, Institute for Defense Analysis, Mitretek, Raytheon Technical Services, Science Applications International Corp., and Washington Group International. According to AMH Consulting’s website, AMH has “technical and programmatic specialties [including] chemical weapons demilitarization, Cooperative Threat Reduction Program nuclear weapons demilitarization, chemical and biological defense, defense against terrorism, force protection, military preparedness, nuclear weapons complex cleanup, and strategic defense.”

Hoeber entered government service in 1981 as a Reagan appointee in the Department of the Army, where she remained until 1986. According to her AMH resume, Hoeber was “responsible to the Secretary and the Under Secretary of the Army for research and development, test and evaluation, and acquisition policies, procedures and programs. [She oversaw] the budgets, technical developments and complex research efforts of forty-one Army laboratories [and managed] the Army's R&D staff.” Prior to joining government, Hoeber worked at the national security research firm System Planning Corporation.

Hoeber was one of several dozen members of the 1970s CPD (which counted Ronald Reagan as an honorary member) to be given posts in the Reagan administration. (For a detailed account of this episode, see Jerry Sanders, Peddlers of Crisis: The Committee on the Present Danger and the Politics of Containment).

Hoeber has advocated limiting U.S. participation in arms control agreements. In 1988, shortly after the election of George H.W. Bush, Hoeber coauthored a New York Times op-ed with Douglas Feith criticizing efforts to create a treaty banning the possession and use of chemical weapons. According to Hoeber and Feith, the use of chemical weapons during the Iran-Iraq War highlighted the problematic nature of enforcing international law. They asked: “why should we produce new treaties if we can't solve the problem of upholding the integrity of existing treaties?” Hoeber and Feith argued that a new chemical weapons ban was sure to fail and would therefore “[increase the] risk that our forces would be attacked with poison gas if an ineffective ban deprived the United States of a chemical retaliatory capability” (New York Times, December 6, 1988).

In 1996, Hoeber argued against U.S. ratification of the Chemical Weapons Convention during testimony before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, chiaredby Sen. Jesse Helms (R-NC). Testifying with Hoeber were several other long-standing opponents of arms control measures, including J.D. Crouch, a future George W. Bush Pentagon appointee then with Department of Defense and Strategic Studies of Missouri State University, and Baker Spring of the Heritage Foundation. According to Hoeber, “the most important reason” for not ratifying the convention was that, “by purporting to rid the world of chemical weapons, ratification of the treaty would virtually guarantee the usual American idealistic response of complacence, of assuming that the treaty solves all of our chemical weapons problems. This will have an inevitable effect of reducing the support both in the Congress and in the Department of Defense for the entire range of programs, equipment, training and intelligence, that are necessary to maintain our troops' capability to defend against chemical weapons. This will increase not only the attractiveness of accumulation of such weapons by our adversaries, but also the impact on our troops should they ever be used against us. It will also reduce our effectiveness to counter terrorism using chemical material, and likely, therefore, increase the attractiveness of this type of terrorism to those who wish to horrify us” (“Testimony before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee: Hearing on the Chemical Weapons Convention,” March 13, 1996).

Hoeber added her voice to the debate over whether Saddam Hussein stockpiled chemical weapons while a guest on CNN’s Wolf Blitzer Reports in April 2003. Described as a “chemical weapons expert,” Hoeber responded to Blitzer’s queries regarding “what [U.S. troops] believe to be some Iraqi mobile chemical and biological labs about 50 miles south of Baghdad,” as he put it. Blitzer asked: “Is this as far as you can tell based on this preliminary information potentially the first smoking gun evidence that Iraq was concealing weapons of mass destruction capabilities?” To which, Hoeber responded: “Well, it could be. I think we still have a lot to go in the way of taking some samples and getting them to some proper laboratories so we can be sure what chemicals were actually present in the labs at some point, but I think the simple fact that they were hidden creates some real concern as to whether they might not be part of a smoking gun” (CNN, April 13, 2003). No evidence ever emerged that Iraq had been using mobile weapons labs.

Affiliations

Government Service

Private Sector

Education

AMH Consulting, Resume, Amoretta M. (Amie) Hoeber, http://www.amhconsulting.net/resume.html.

AMH Consulting, Client List, http://amhconsulting.net/clients.html; AMH Consulting, Activities and Past Projects List, http://amhconsulting.net/projects.html.

Jerry Sanders, Peddlers of Crisis: The Committee on the Present Danger and the Politics of Containment (Boston: South End Press, 1983).

Committee on the Present Danger, U.S. Members List, http://www.committeeonthepresentdanger.org/OurMembers/tabid/364/Default.aspx.

“Have U.S. Troops Found Evidence That Proves Saddam Hussein had Chemical, Biological Weapons of Mass Destruction?” CNN, Wolf Blitzer Reports, April 14, 2003.

“About Women in International Security,” http://wiis.georgetown.edu/about/.

“Women in International Security,” Federal New Service Daybook, July 12, 2000.

“Event: Symposium—American University,” Federal News Service Daybook, December 5, 2001.

Amoretta Hoeber and Douglas Feith, “Poison Gas, Poisoned Treaties,” New York Times, December 6, 1988.

Amoretta Hoeber, et al., “Testimony before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee: Hearing on the Chemical Weapons Convention,” March 13, 1996.

Defense Science Board, “1998 Summer Study Task Force on DOD Logistics Transformation,” Vol. II, http://www.acq.osd.mil/dsb/reports/logtran2.pdf.

Forbes, Amoretta M. Hoeber profile, http://www.forbes.com/finance/mktguideapps/personinfo/FromPersonIdPersonTearsheet.jhtml?passedPersonId=884923.

Administration of George (H.W.) Bush, 1992, http://bulk.resource.org/gpo.gov/papers/1992/1992_vol1_1236.pdf.

U.S. Congress, Office of Technology Assessment, Virtual Reality
and Technologies for Combat Simulation—Background Paper, OTA-BP-ISS-136 (Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office, September 1994).

Task Force on Women, Minorities, and the Handicapped, “Changing America: The New Face of Science and Engineering,” December 1989, p. 38, http://ntrs.nasa.gov/archive/nasa/casi.ntrs.nasa.gov/19930075102_1993075102.pdf.

Chemical Corps Regimental Association, Hall of Fame, http://www.chemical-corps.org/honors/hof.htm.

Kennedy Center, http://www.kennedy-center.org/states/state.cfm?state=MD.

NBC Industry Group, Officers and Directors, http://www.nbcindustrygroup.com/board.html.

United Jewish Endowment Fund, “Report to the Community 2006,” http://www.associated.org/local_includes/downloads/15157.pdf.