Spy satellite

I worked in a small corner of the MDA program as recently as about three years ago. I can tell you the technology is beyond what you, Hollywood or the SciFi channel can imagine. I would speculate that MDA took advantage of this incident primarily as a test for the opportunity to employ a reentry shot in a real-world scenario. Not for any fear of it landing in a hostile country. The odds of even small pieces surviving reentry are pretty slim. Even if they did, they would be nothing more than relatively small chunks of burned debris.