The main story is complete and well written, great! Scenario II: No rational link exists between what was done and what was officially said. Therefore, lets consider the irrational possibilities. Suspend logic based on basic doctrine of the military, consider wild, unmentioned, speculations.

Preamble: The best reason mentioned to consider alternatives is the fact that the spy satellite was as big as a bus and we knew everything about its trajectory. Like the author so correctly concluded: Blowing it up proved nothing!

What if the people in charge really knew what they were doing but something went wrong and they wanted to have no traces of it on the ground, much less in foreign soil.

What kind of thing might they have been trying to do? Of course, I do not know and if I knew I couldn't tell. But, I do not know therefore I can speculate like a fiction writer might. Think of something as big as a bus that we want nobody to know about. Maybe an unmanned hypersonic glider, that would fly planned maneouvers, like an Unmanned Air Vehicle like "Predator" with the heat protection of the Space Shuttle and start an engine to approach a house or a car target to fire a rocket at it, which "Actionable Intelligence had identified", a valid target to quote a current Presidential Candidate. .

Regardless of the purpose and the details, the important thing became to hide everything so nothing could be proven, even if the story was leaked. Then, blowing it up, big, in space would make sense. Remember the Space shuttle that burnt on entry, it left tons of debri that survived re-entry heat.

Of course, I am sure readers will suggest a more plausible alternative and even describe the truth, like Ike had to face the truth after the Pilot was seen alive. In this case, there is no pilot, I am 99.99% sure.

Using your space shuttle analogy, and the understood purpose of the satellite as being one for spying.... It makes perfect sense to me why they would want to shoot the thing out of the sky. So what if they told the public that the primary concern was falling debris and hydrazine...a valid reason if you ask me...especially the falling debris part, but like you, I feel it had more to do with the payload than the publicly stated danger of hydrazine-coated satellite fragments falling from the sky. What makes you think they would give the public any sort of clue as to what sorts of tools were available on that satellite for doing the job it was intended to do? Besides admitting it was a spy satellite, that is all we are ever going to know....gonna miss ol USA 193.