He was the representative from the conference. Anyone from the conference would have been relaying hearsay. Congress knew it, and if they didn't want to know, they wouldn't have called him.
No need to check Smoking Gun. The DD-214 is on
Kerry's site (pdf). People constantly complain that Kerry hasn't released his records, when you just have to look at his site. Meanwhile, the Bush records trickle out slowly in response to FOIA requests.