Imagine this, if before they altered everything, they restored the O-Neg and printed it on newer film stock to preserve the original versions for future years and they just, have never told us anything about it and they put the it into the Twentieth Century Fox Film Vaults and hid it from the world, then they go and create the Special Editions. Then they’d go on in 2006 and give us a Laserdisc Master with the original crawl spliced on.
Which has me thinking, did they really restore the original versions, then printed it on new film stock, and then just went and made the Special Editions, then went onto say that they printed over the O-Neg “When these were completed, they apparently were printed onto film and re-cut into the negative, replacing the original negs, which were undoubtedly put back into storage.” - The Secret History of Star Wars, 11/03/09
But could this be a coverup and the “Original” (I use that term loosely due to the fact where my theory is that they restored the Unaltered Versions and reprinted them on newer film stock) Negative, which could still be in the vaults and they’ve kept it under wraps because George acts like a big baby when someone questions the original versions.
I suspect this is exactly what happened.