He's retired, so that would suggest he's not directly involved and is only giving his views based on experience of people, how things work, etc. He has connections to people on the inside or close to it so he can speak with some knowledge and even drop info that he's been allowed to give. Sometimes they'll use someone like him to drop good info without the official stamp on it so that there's some plausible deniability, since he can say it was just his educated opinion.