There is a lot more to the story. The Soviets were convinced enough about their sub being rammed that they contrived to ram a US vessel in retaliation.<p>Navy ratings involved in the operation, not bound by secrecy, in interviews said the part of the sub retrieved was fatally radioactive, and ended up buried somewhere south of San Francisco.<p>The ship was more or less useless afterward--too big and expensive to operate, for anything that anyone could think of to use it for--and was sold at auction for scrap value.<p>There was a claim that the sub had been involved in an operation to launch a nuke at Hawaii, in a way meant to look like the Chinese were responsible, but that it blew up instead and sank the sub, possibly by triggering an anti-sabotage mechanism. Most observers think that's nonsense. (AIUI, Soviet naval missiles just float out of the sub to the surface, and launch from there.) A sensationalist book, Red Star Rising, claimed to be based on such interviews and other details about peculiar personnel scheduling aboard.<p>I don't know what's true, but I was astonished that Soviet naval staff activity was so transparent.
I can highly recommend a book <i>Blind Man's Bluff: The Untold Story of American Submarine Espionage</i>, which has more information on this specific incident as well as other spy submarine stories from the Cold War