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Where is your proof of this accusation?  

"Sightings of rock apes by Viet Cong and NVA troops were also common enough that an NVA general, General Hoang Minh Tha, organized an expedition in 1974 to try to capture or at least kill one of these legendary creatures. The expedition was unsuccessful, though, and no hard evidence for the existence of the rock apes was found."   "Another expedition organized by Professor Vo Quy of the Vietnam National University was similarly unsuccessful. However, strange human-like (but not human) footprints were found in the jungle in 1970 by Professor Tran Hong Viet of Hanoi’s Pedagogic University. He made casts of the footprints, but found no further evidence of the rock apes’ existence,"   Rock Apes: How Vietnam's 'Rock Apes' Confounded American GIs.   In the posted article, the author said rock apes get up to 6' tall and they throw rocks at people like bigfoot does. At least some prominent individuals in Vietnam such as General Tha and two professors Hong Vet and Vo Quy  have launched searches for Rock Apes. We don't have generals or many professors looking to document bigfoot due to the stigma generally held by Americans. The Forest Service has hired quite a few PHD biologist and we don't hear from them in regards to bigfoot. The Forest Service call bigfoot a mythical primate so their biologist are sitting on evidence because the higher ups refuse to recognize bigfoots. Why are we so different from Vietnam? Is the Forest Service threatening their biologist to stay quiet on bigfoot?  Why would they quelch bigfoot searches and hide knowledge from the public?    

I meant to say thank you also for going to the trouble of finding and attaching the clippings. Sources are immensely important and people who are willing to engage cogently with rational, well thought out ideas are the reason I joined (and the reason i believe- (tip of the hat to bill munns))

Thank you for the reply. I’m aware of the footprints, Bill Martin saying they were the wrong size (but who else would they be)  etc. I’ve been through old newspaper clippings because you can’t believe anything anyone says on the internet and as close to original source is as good as anyone can get.  My interest right now is purely where the “hairy bipedal carrying a red cloth/bag along a ridge” came into the story.    It seems that it’s a Paulides fabrication but I want to give his own words a chance before I dismiss him completely 

Not from the book, but here is substantially the same thing is noted at https://vanished.us/cases/dennis-martin-vanished-great-smokey-mountains/.  This page mentions footprints that were found as if it was mysterious.  One of the Kingsport Times articles published during the search stated that tracks were found of a person with one shoe off and one shoe on.  While they don't mention size (or I missed it in skimming the article), they tried to use tracking dogs on that section.  Presumably, because they thought that the tracks were from Dennis.  Here's the earliest report available, which was almost a month after the disappearance.  The second article mentions the car that was nearby, partially hidden off the road.  I don't want to say absolutely nothing Bigfoot-related to see here, but I would be at about 93% or greater that this was a tragic accident or unfortunate encounter with a hungry animal.