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John F Kennedy’s assassination was carried out by the secret service, according to a deathbed confession given to the veteran film director Oliver Stone.

The famed Hollywood movie maker claims he was told the US President ’s murder in 1963 was an inside job by a man who said he was a former member of the presidential security detail.

It is the first time the conversation has been revealed.

Known only as ‘Ron’, the man told Stone that ‘somebody from his own team… had fired on the President’.

The man, who was dying of cancer, said he had only ever told his son but wanted to reveal what he know before passing away.

Initially, the messages were given to Stone in a series of secret notes before the two men finally met.

The director, whose film JFK starring Kevin Costner was sympathetic to conspiracy theories, said he was initially extremely sceptical about the claims.

The Warren Commission into Kennedy’s death ruled it had been carried out by former US marine Lee Harvey Oswald from the sixth floor of the Texas School Book Depository.

They concluded he shot the President while travelling in an open limousine through Dallas in November 1963.

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Oswald was shot dead himself two days later by a local nightclub owner Jack Ruby who police say had with connections to the criminal underworld.

However many have doubted the commission’s findings believing others were involved.

But after meeting with Ron, Stone said he believed he was telling the truth.

(Image: BPM MEDIA)

As a former marine in Vietnam, the director said he was left convinced by the “military jargon” and intricate details within an account that he describes as “plausible” and “very authentic”.

Stone revealed the man’s confession for the first time to Matt Zoller Seitz, who is the author of a forthcoming book on the Oscar-winning screenwriter whose films include Platoon.

When asked why Stone had kept it secret so long Seitz said: “I think it was because he trusted me, and also because both the father and the son have been dead for a while.

“Nobody has ever heard this story. I’m the first person.”

In his book, Seitz tells how Stone initially received Ron’s messages.

The director told him: “He came to me through a series of weird letters through post office boxes.

(Image: Getty Images)

“Everything would go to a PO Box, and he’d locate it from offshore, from Bermuda.”

Then detailing the moment they met in a hotel in Rochester, New York, Stone recalled: “He said he didn’t want money or recognition. He said something like, ‘I want you to know this is from my conscience’.

“The scenario he laid out was very practical. It’s the way I would do it, if [I] were going to do something like that.

“You kill the President, and your cover is security, and if the sniper or snipers who kill the President are hidden in with the guys who are supposed to protect him, guys who have no knowledge of this plot… It makes a lot of sense.

“And his memory of it was so technical, filled with military jargon, details about radio communications right after the shots.”

The book, titled The Oliver Stone Experience, will be published on September 13 by Abrams & Chronicle books.