Speaking at a Washington Institute Special Policy Forum Wednesday, Assistant to the President for Homeland Security and Counterterrorism Ken Wainstein stressed that the gravest terrorism threat right now is from “terrorist organizations [acquiring] weapons of mass destruction and [using] them against us, our homeland, or our allies.”

This reality, he said, was made clear when "we went into Afghanistan and learned that Al Qaeda had been developing a program to cultivate and weaponize anthrax that could be used to kill by the hundreds or thousands … And it has been made even clearer with events in the years since …”

“Biological weapons are the most likely” terrorist WMD threat right now,” agreed Charles "Sam" Faddis, a 20-year veteran CIA officer who was a National Counterterrorism Center department chief overseeing “worldwide operations against the terrorist WMD target” when he retired from the clandestine services last May.

Faddis told HSToday.us earlier this week that, yes, terrorists are probably more likely to try to use biological weapons in the near future, noting that such an attack would “be devastating and it would totally cause catastrophic casualties.”

In his address Wednesday, Wainstein reminded that the final report of the Commission on the Prevention of Weapons of Mass Destruction Proliferation and Terrorism issued last month “recognized the gravity of the threat posed by weapons of mass destruction - and in particular biological and nuclear weapons.”

The WMD Commission’s report concluded that the United States more likely can expect a terrorist attack using biological weapons rather than nuclear weapons before 2013.

"The biological threat is greater than the nuclear; the acquisition of deadly pathogens, and their weaponization and dissemination in aerosol form, would entail fewer technical hurdles than the theft or production of weapons-grade uranium or plutonium and its assembly into an improvised nuclear device," the report stated.

“The Commission did the nation an important service by carefully analyzing this issue [and] providing a roadmap for enhancing our ability to confront what amounts to the gravest and most immediate threat facing our nation,” Wainstein said.

In addition to the US WMD Commission report, a new report from Britain’s Institute of Public Policy Research (IPPR) Commission on National Security in the 21st Century also recently warned that terrorists’ use of biological warfare is one of the biggest emerging threats posed by terrorists in the foreseeable future.

Terrorists might even try to employ a pandemic-capable strain of avian flu, British homeland security authorities warned. HSToday.us reported on this potential threat several years ago.

Terrorists getting their hands on biological WMDs is what keeps Faddis awake at night, he told HSToday.us.

Having worked against the most dangerous terrorist organizations on the planet with extensive firsthand experience with their methodology and tactics as a former Middle East Chief of Station and Chief of Base, and a Branch Chief at CIA headquarters, Faddis took the first CIA team into Iraq in the summer of 2002 in advance of the post-9/11 invasion.

Inside Iraq, the team discovered “key” Al Qaeda-linked terrorists in the north, including terrorist scientists working on chemical and biological weapons. But because of “endless planning and delays,” the chance was lost to take out these and other Al Qaeda members who were fleeing US air strikes in Afghanistan.

In charge of CIA WMD counterterrorism efforts from September 2006 to May 2008, Faddis told HSToday.us that terrorists’ pursuit of WMDs – and biological weapons capabilities in particular – “is really intricate and worldwide.”

“Nearly every time we kicked down a door to an Al Qaeda or some other terrorist group’s safehouse we found laptops with WMD materials … lots and lots and lots of stuff on manufacturing of WMDs … It’s pretty unusual not to find it … everybody wants it. Everybody is psyched about it,” said Faddis, now president of Orion Strategic Services, LLC, a geopolitical and security consulting firm.

Faddis stressed that “the threat is very real,” and noted that the clear and present “danger comes from the stuff that’s much cruder [and easier to develop], like Anthrax [released] from a crop duster.”