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The problem we have is that we have a First Hand observer

In Mark, yes. In Clement, no.

I’m a big fan of the Dead Sea Scrolls - because they have slipped through time (written between 150 BC to 70 AD) largely untouched by the corruptions of man.

This is an unrealistic idealization.

First, the Dead Sea Scrolls may be old to us, but the DSS texts of the Hebrew scriptures were copies of texts that were already a thousand years old when the DSS scribes copied them.

The DSS contains multiple copies of some texts, and they do not match.

Moreover, the DSS were produced by a zealous, and frankly strange, little community - they copied and recopied texts that they believed supported their favorite interpretations and views and did not have copies of much of the Bible, probably because most of the Bible did not reinforce their favorite interpretations.

The DSS are a prime example of "the corruptions of man" - in the sense that the DSS are highly edited and biased collections of texts.

The closest thing we can get to the origional message, is the origional manuscript

The autographs are gone forever. So we are left with a choice of which community has most believably preserved the message, and in a choice between the mainstream of Christianity and Judaism versus a tiny, extinct sect of conspiracists, the correct decision seems clear.

perhaps a manuscript that hasn’t been touched for nearly 2,000 years

That's a facile assumption. Inaccurate texts that people do not trust get left alone and forgotten - and then sometimes get found many years later.

Texts that people trust get used and used and used until they wear out - and then they are copied, to make a new book that the users of the old book will trust.

The age of a manuscript is important, but not prescriptive.

The texts are of great religious and historical significance, as they include the earliest known surviving copies of Biblical and extra-biblical documents and preserve evidence of great diversity in late Second Temple Judaism. They are written in Hebrew, Aramaic and Greek, mostly on parchment, but with some written on papyrus.[1] These manuscripts generally date between 150 BCE and 70 CE,[2] although carbon dating indicates this range extends to the third century BCE (see Carbon dating the Dead Sea Scrolls). Bronze coins found on the site form a series beginning with Hyrcanus 1 (135-104 BCE) and continue without a gap until the first Jewish revolt.[3] The scrolls are traditionally identified with the ancient Jewish sect called the Essenes, though some recent interpretations have challenged this association and argue that the scrolls were penned by priests in Jerusalem, Zadokites, or other unknown Jewish groups.[4][5]

One of the greatest "re-enforcers" of accuracy of the Old Testament, is the number of copies, independantly kept by various groups, through the centuries has worked to keep them in alignment. If we have 'x' groups that say one thing, and a single manuscript that differs substancially - we can extrapolate that the numerous copies of independant collections must be the accurate copy.

However, in the New Testament we are not so fortunate. The Bible, as we have it now, is a collection of books that were separate - with some books discarded and others accepted. The Council of Nicea essentially "cherry-picked" what books were included and which were rejected. Every council makes concessions to appease various political factions - it's the nature of man.

Perhaps the DSS are copies made by a fanatical group - but if nothing else, they give a view point that deserves some attention and comparison against the various versions of the Bible in vogue today. I believe there are over 42 different "versions" of the Bible around, each differing in some way or another from their contemporaries.

Actually, we don't really know this to be the case.

I tend to think Sukenik's original assessment - that the scroll caves were by and large genizat, resting places for old, corrupted, or incorrectly transcribed manuscripts (and the latter two are two different things, btw) - is probably the correct one. But such an interpretation isn't as sexy as ones which allow scholars to spend the next fifty years publishing papers back and forth about what the supposed millennial apocalyptic community that lived at Qumran supposedly thought, said, and did.