A recent U.S. District Court indictment accused members of a shadowy Islamist gang, Jam'iyyat Ul-Islam As-Saheeh ("Assembly of Authentic Islam," JIS), of conspiring to strike U.S. military facilities, Israeli national interests and synagogues around Los Angeles sometime during the autumn 2005 Jewish holidays. Most of the defendants are converts to Islam, allegedly loyal to imprisoned JIS leader Kevin James, a self-styled imam to whom at least one defendant allegedly swore bayat (an oath of allegiance) "until death by martyrdom" [1].If the allegations stick, this case represents a milestone in American Islamic militancy: it would be the only known large-scale plot directed against U.S. targets to have been planned from within the United States and potentially executed by a predominantly American Radical Islamic Convert (ARIC) cell. Beyond the California modalities of the alleged plot, it raises broader questions about the activities of ARICs in the plan of global jihad and potentially sheds light on broader post-9/11 ideological trends and tactical shifts in jihadi warfare in the West.