"There hasn't been someone who can stand up to the secretary of State or a secretary of Commerce or other Cabinet officials when the final decision is made," Graham said.
Obama has said that, as president, he would dramatically accelerate work to lock down nuclear material around the world.
A paper issued by his campaign in July said Obama would "appoint a deputy national security advisor to be in charge of coordinating all U.S. programs aimed at reducing the risk of nuclear terrorism and weapons proliferation."
Biden on Wednesday suggested the administration would follow the report's recommendations.
"We're not doing all we can to prevent the world's most lethal weapons from winding up in the hands of terrorists," Biden said. "This report is more than a warning about what we are doing wrong. It's a pragmatic blueprint for how to get it right."
But some specialists, and some officials in the Bush administration, cautioned against appointing too many advisors.
Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff urged caution Wednesday, saying that the government risked creating too many extraneous layers of bureaucracy by creating "a czar to do this and a czar to do that."
"I put a big yellow light on, [a] go-slow, in terms of reorganizations," Chertoff said.
Dizikes is a writer in our Washington bureau.
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cynthia.dizikes@latimes.com
Josh Meyer, a writer in our Washington bureau, contributed to this report.
