The recent indictment of American born Colleen Renee LaRose, a Pennsylvania woman dubbed “Jihad Jane,” on charges of “conspiracy to provide material support to terrorists [and] conspiracy to kill in a foreign country,” and the subsequent detention in Ireland of 31-year-old Colorado mother, Jamie Paulin-Ramirez, and seven other people in connection with alleged terrorist activity tended to confirm counterterrorists’ concerns that Westerners have and are being recruited by Al Qaeda and associated movements (AQAM).

Indeed. The 31-year-old Paulin-Ramirez is a stereotypically attractive blue-eyed blond.

More than a month ago, though, counterterrorism officials were warning that Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) was actively recruiting English-speaking individuals, especially people who look like Westerners who already are Muslims or have recently converted. Intelligence officials said at that time that they were concerned that persons born in America were believed to have been recruited by AQAP.

But years before the explosion of homegrown jihadists that erupted very publicly with the November 5 jihadist-inspired killing spree by Muslim Army Major Nidal Malik Hasan at Ft. Hood, the US Intelligence Community had been warning that Islamist terrorists were being breed on American soil, and that it was just a matter of time before they began murdering in the name of Allah.

Counterterrorism officials here and in Great Britain had repeatedly cautioned that Al Qaeda was aggressively working to radicalize and recruit American and “Western looking” Muslims, and to radicalize the newly converted.

American born Anwar Al Awlaki, the leader of AQAP, a newly operational terrorist organization, has been tied to a significant number of recently arrested and suspected jihadists, including the radicalization and recruiting of Hasan, Christmas day would-be bomber Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, LaRose and former New Jersey resident Sharif Mobley, a man with  dual Yemeni-American citizenship who tried to shoot his way out of a hospital in San'a, Yemen, killing one guard and wounding another, in an escape attempt following his arrest in a roundup of suspected AQAP members.

Counterterrorists who have talked about the growing homegrown jihadist threat with HSToday.us said intelligence indicates Al Awlaki has “hundreds of followers” inside the US and abroad, and that recent arrests, indictments, and detentions of suspected jihadists linked to him “are just the tip of the iceberg,” as one of the officials said.

Involved with Paulin-Ramirez were seven other people, including an Algerian man reputed to have been the principal contact for LaRose, who also had a relationship with Paulin-Ramirez, and seven other Muslims that included three Algerians, a Libyan, a Palestinian, and a Croatian – all believed to have ties to Al Awlaki, authorities said.

According to intelligence officials and family of Paulin-Ramirez, she had contact with Najibullah Zazi, a radicalized Afghan-American who lived in Colorado who pleaded guilty to conspiring to use weapons of mass destruction to blow up New York City’s subways. It was a plot also believed to have ties to AQAP that has been described by counterterrorism officials as the most serious terrorist threat in the United States since the Sept. 11 attacks.

A US counterterrorism official called Zazi "the first concrete case" since the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks of Al Qaeda sending jihadists to the US to plot new attacks.

Intelligence analysts had long warned though that Al Qaeda intended to continue to attack the US on its own soil. "The surprising thing is Zazi is the first," the official said, calling Zazi's contacts with core Al Qaeda leaders "at most one step removed."

US and Western counterterrorism authorities believe they have identified at least another dozen persons tied to Awlaki who “have gone operatonal”  and may be part of a new Al Qaeda cell in the US.