Episode #8: Richard Gross on the Role of the Legal Advisor to the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
The Lawfare Podcast
The Lawfare Institute
4.7 • 6.4K Ratings
🗓️ 9 April 2012
⏱️ 39 minutes
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Summary
Robert Chesney and William Banks of Syracuse University College of Law interview Brig. General Richard Gross, legal adviser to the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, on the role of his little-known office.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | The following podcast contains advertising to access an ad-free version of the LawFair |
| 0:07.2 | podcast become a material supporter of LawFair at patreon.com slash LawFair, that's patreon.com slash |
| 0:16.8 | LawFair. Also check out LawFair's other podcast offerings, rational security, chatter, LawFair |
| 0:25.6 | no bull, and the aftermath. |
| 0:45.1 | Hello, and welcome to the LawFair podcast. I'm Benjamin Wittis. Our subject today is the |
| 0:51.7 | Office of the Legal Advisor to the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. We're going to talk about |
| 0:57.3 | the Legal Advisor's role, the structure of this little known office, its place in the inter-agency |
| 1:03.7 | system, and some of the issues that are currently on the Legal Advisor's desk. And like Woody Allen, |
| 1:10.0 | in Annie Hall, pulling out Marshall McLuhan in a movie theater line, we happen to have the |
| 1:15.7 | Legal Advisor to the Joint Chiefs right here, US Army Brigadier General Rich Gross, or at least |
| 1:23.4 | Bobby Chesney and Bill Banks of Syracuse University College of Law had him and interviewed him |
| 1:29.9 | up in Cambridge last week. We should probably begin with a sketch of the Joint Chiefs of Staff |
| 1:35.7 | system itself for the benefit of listeners who aren't familiar with it. What precisely is the |
| 1:40.3 | JCS? Well, you start Bobby with the, you have the Department of Defense obviously in the three |
| 1:45.6 | departments underneath the Department of the Navy, the Department of the Army, and the Department of |
| 1:50.3 | the Air Force, and in the four military services, Army Navy Air Force and Marines. The Joint Chiefs |
| 1:55.9 | of Staff is a statutory body which you can find in Title X, Section 151 of the US Code, and it |
| 2:02.6 | consists of the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the Vice Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, |
| 2:07.3 | the Chiefs of Staff of the Army and the Air Force, the Chief of Naval Operations, and the |
| 2:11.9 | Common Out of the Marine Corps, and most recently due to the 2012 National Defense Authorization Act, |
| 2:18.7 | the Chief of the National Guard Bureau is now a statutory member of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. |
| 2:23.5 | So that body is the military advisory body to the President of the United States, and obviously |
... |
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