There's also probably a lot to be said for his 3 or so years at HQ Land Command as assistant director intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance. While I don't have any personal experience to speak of in this regard either, "intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance" at his level seems like he would have seen a lot of paid informant sources on the ground and been involved in analysis in terms of both intelligence and counter-intelligence of those sources. That could have been both sources being paid for information and to give misinformation, evaluation of who might be paying those sources to give you misinformation, and reports on a variety of mercenary activities. That experience might be doing the heavy lifting here.
And, there's always the chance that he's still involved in some capacity post retirement. If that continuing relationship did exist, it could mean he has information he's been asked to speak publicly from or it could be he's asked to spin public narratives.
What he has to say probably means something, but there's probably no way to tell what exactly that is. I mean, there's a wikipedia page about this guy's career. That's not true for most people.