Hmm, I knew nothing about any of this. I was on the way home from Maine that week. I stopped watching TV years ago and don't listen to the car radio.
The objects are more than likely balloons with some type of intelligence gathering equipment attached.
Anybody interested in aliens ought to visit the Apache reservation near where I live. There's a place, Archuleta Mesa (google it), on the reservation. Sometimes at night there are some pretty strange lights shooting up from the mesa. The Indians won't talk about them.