ABSTRACT
Deputy Commander in Chief and Chief of Staff Ahmad Husayn al-Ghashmi was promptly chosen chairman of the Command Council. Al-Ghashmi possessed none of al-Hamdi's personal magnetism, and he was thought by many erroneously, it seems to be devoid of both intelligence and ambition. In his first message to the nation, Al-Ghashmi called for calm and pledged both to punish the assassins of al-Hamdi and to maintain the domestic and external course of the 13 June Correction Movement. The story of the al-Ghasmi interlude is less a matter of what happened than of what was expected to happen and did not. On the one hand, the people did not rise in revolt against the presumed reactionary killers of their beloved al-Hamdi. On the other hand, the tribalists and other conservatives in league with the Saudis did not undo what al-Hamdi.
