Ah ha, u ask a very good question. And here is the
tricky part.
On one of the shit times articles I read, Hsien Yang was allowed to view the transcripts at the govt office, only after signing a confidentiality agreement. That is mentioned in the first article. He mentioned that when he went to view it, the word "Secret" was not stamped on any of the transcript documents. In fact, they were just like any other piece of paperwork. As far as the family was concerned, the agreement that Old Man signed with the Cabinet Secretary over the transcripts does not mention anything about the transcripts being Official Secrets. Otherwise, they would have been stamped with "Secret" chop, and would have been under lock and key somewhere in a Ministry building. I think the estate was very surprised to learn that the judge designated them as documents under the OSA, because according to the judge, they were "politically sensitive". This is really bullshit as far as I am concerned, and it seems that the estate was railroaded and played out by the kangaroo judge.
Once the judge made the decision that they are covered under the OSA (something that is beyond his scope and qualification to do), the sister and brother were screwed, they were never going to get them back. This brings into question other interview transcripts that Old man had done. For example, when his biographer Alex Josey interviewed him for the books "Lee Kuan Yew - The Struggle for Singapore" and "Lee Kuan Yew - The Crucial Years", why weren't these interview transcripts also covered under the OSA? After all, Old Fart did make many political commentaries in those books. How come the books themselves as well as Alex Josey's transcripts were not covered under OSA?
By putting the interview transcripts under the OSA, it has prevented the estate from putting out a final book on Old Man. The transcripts can be mined for book material by a ghost writer, and put together as a series of thoughts and opinions. In the wake of Old man's death, any such book release from the estate from a new source like these transcripts would sell like hotcakes. This court decision has killed this potential line of revenues if the estate had wanted to do it. It seems to me that Wei Ling and Hsien Yang really got tekanned in this case by SIL.