HST was almost a clone of the KH-11 photographic intelligence satellite (they used the same shipping container and were manufactured by the same people). The KH-12 was an upgrade of the KH-11 (basically an HST with a big rocket engine attached. See the following URLs:

http://fas.org/spp/military/program/imint/kh-11.htm
http://fas.org/spp/military/program/imint/kh-12.htm

A total of six of these satellites have been launched, gone through their life span and then presumably dumped into the ocean (imagine the science that could have been done if they had looked "up" rather than "down"). The US government would have had far more heatburn over losing those satellites than HST.

Gary