This is a bit of a partial myth. This idea was probably used when negotiating for funding in some quarters, but it was never a particularly plausible use of it, for at least two reasons. First, of course, the shuttle can only access extremely restricted orbits which most targets of interest would not be in. And second, countermeasures would be trivial if the Soviets believed such a threat to actually exist; just incorporate a few kilos of explosives into each device.

I'm reasonably sure this story was always more of a case of "how do we sell this thing" than "this is something that we can actually realistically do".