I guess I can believe he did have lawyers sniff out and destroy whatever he could that was out there, maybe just because he's so against that version being shown publicly, but they wouldn't make a dvd/blu-ray from those prints anyway. They're all chewed up from being projected 5 times a day. (and Star Wars played theaters on and off for 3 solid years!). That seems different from raiding and destroying stuff from his own vaults, since he keeps everything. they even still had the alternate angles from the raw dailies of Alec Guinness for that Revenge of the Sith trailer. Wouldn't it be weird if the missing shots were reconstructed from alternate takes? Apparently, The new Blu-ray Godfather had to do exactly that for a few seconds.

On the other hand, it was mentioned here that some rich dude in LA has a 70mm print that he recently showed privately that supposedly still looked great. I saw a screening of a 70mm print around 1991 that looked brand new, maybe there's a small wave of new(er), nicer prints out there (made for stuff like the 1987 trilogy screenings and some other semi-forgotten events that took place during the "dark times" of the 80s and 90s?)