A former top CIA official has attacked Donald Trump as a danger to America’s national security, saying president Vladimir Putin had made the Republican presidential candidate an “unwitting agent” of Russia.

Three disclosures in the past week have shown the United States is losing its way in the struggle against terrorism.

Tight security is in force around the Four Seasons Hotel in south Dublin this afternoon ahead of a highly secretive meeting of past and present world leaders, businessmen and artists.

The FBI had been hunting for two of the suicide hijackers who launched Tuesday's terror attacks for two weeks before they struck, it has been reported.