Baronlando said:
The deliberate destruction of ALL that stuff (that's endless feet of film all over the world- including stealing the archive print from the Library of Congress, Ocean's 11 style!) would be pretty hard to do.

Whatever the true number of people who really want the original version might be, it can't be any less than there was for Close Encounters

Well, the page I linked to didn't say he destroyed all the prints in the world or anything from the library of congress, just that he recalled and destroyed all the release prints he could and that he said in 1997 that the original theatrical versions no longer existed. I don't have a clue about the accuracy of that account, but I've seen stuff said (in other places than that page) that would fit with that.