I'm the OP so here's a follow-up. The archive repairs are what solved my actual problem. Following them I was able to successfully download Squeeze DVD 1 and move the image around for package extraction. The jigdo issues were not my difficulty.
The actual point of using this ancient release, which I hadn't mentioned, was to get a salt-minion installed and configured into an existing salt complex and begin rectification. After an additional 3 days wrestling with the Debian and Saltstack repositories and dealing with apt-get package resolution difficulties, I managed to complete that on one server and it's in the complex. My work-around is totally brain-dead, but it circumvents the resolution issues with apt-get. It's possible that using apt, aptitude or synaptic would have worked better, but I don't have time to find-out yet (or perhaps an apt-get problem; I can't really touch fundamental software on these servers yet, most are production). Many, many thanks to Thomas Schmitt and Phil Hands for their help. Es Lebe Die Döner mit Scharf! (Auch griechischer Typ!) Vielen Dank. Now: In case anyone wonders, this is exactly how linux destroyed the old unix vendors and microsloth in the data-center. I get better support here for free than I ever got from them for thousands. Once it was noodled-out, it was fixed in under 24 hours. Carry on :-)
