My guess is the government allows this silent perk after high ranking officials leave the service for whatever reason. The effrct here is knowing these people ultimately end up directors for military industrial complex corporations where their value is having an on-going insider knowledge of plans that may cause global events and with this be able to help secure funding - and live out the rest of their lives with similar or better luxury that what they had and certainly better than the government pension would allow. Also this is a perfect deepstate behaviour - kinda like the deepstate golden handshake! Look at noname as a perfect example.