NBC News — “Former Israeli space security chief says extraterrestrials exist, and Trump knows about it” (December 8, 2020)

Source: NBC News Date: December 8, 2020 Primary URL: https://www.nbcnews.com/news/weird-news/former-israeli-space-security-chief-says-extraterrestrials-exist-trump-knows-n1250333 Sourced: 2026-05-19 via direct requests + readability extract

NBC News English-language coverage of Haim Eshed’s December 2020 Yediot Aharonot interview — the most-circulated foreign-government-official “Galactic Federation” claim on the modern UAP record. This file captures the verbatim Eshed quotes that the galactic-federation-and-cosmological-claims topic summarizes.

Eshed’s load-bearing claims (verbatim, via NBC English translation)

“The Unidentified Flying Objects have asked not to publish that they are here, humanity is not ready yet.”

Cooperation agreements had been signed between species, including an “underground base in the depths of Mars” where there are American astronauts and alien representatives.

“There is an agreement between the U.S. government and the aliens. They signed a contract with us to do experiments here.”

President Donald Trump was aware of the extraterrestrials’ existence and had been “on the verge of revealing” information but was asked not to in order to prevent “mass hysteria.”

NBC characterization: aliens are “equally curious about humanity and were seeking to understand ‘the fabric of the universe.‘”

Source provenance

  • Original Hebrew interview: Yediot Aharonot newspaper, Friday December 4-5, 2020 (https://www.yediot.co.il/articles/0,7340,L-5854241,00.html — Hebrew, paywalled)
  • English translation pickup: Jerusalem Post, Tuesday December 8, 2020
  • NBC News story: published shortly after Jerusalem Post translation
  • Promotional context: Eshed’s book The Universe Beyond the Horizon: Conversations with Professor Haim Eshed was simultaneously being promoted

About Eshed

  • Former head of Israel’s Defense Ministry space directorate
  • “Father of Israel’s space capabilities programme” per Israeli media at his 2011 retirement
  • Responsible for the launch of 20 Israeli-made satellites
  • Three-time Israel Security Award winner
  • Retired general

The credentialing matters for the credibility framework: this is the most institutionally-credentialed foreign-government-official Galactic Federation claim in the modern record. Whatever the substance, the figure making the claim has documented top-tier defense-establishment standing.

Why this primary matters

  1. Direct Eshed verbatim, NBC News-archived. Prior to this capture, the Eshed quotes circulated in the repo via the galactic-federation topic file’s summary. NBC News (mainstream US outlet) is the citation-of-record for the English-language version.

  2. The “Trump on the verge of revealing” framing is specific. Subsequent UAP-disclosure discourse has cycled back to a Trump-vs-disclosure narrative (Feb 2026 Truth Social directive, “Project Preserve Destiny” framing). Eshed’s 2020 claim placed Trump in this position 5 years before the Feb 2026 directive.

  3. The “underground base on Mars” claim is the most-extreme version of the cooperation-agreement framing. No US-government source corroborates; the claim is institutionally-credentialed but not independently verifiable.

Cross-references

External primary references