Permission denied when trying to cat file /Library on Mac OS X 13.6

I have been experiencing difficulties installing a piece of 3rd party software, fuse for mac os x. Through the installer I was getting a permission denied error which seemed very odd because I had entered my admin password during the installation process.

I ended up running the installer from the command line and installing the software in another directory.

I then copied the files to the expected locations in /Library (which is not protected by SIP).

During the cp operation several "permission denied" errors were written to stdout/err. The files were written, they are the correct size... but when I go to read them...

$ sudo cat /Library/PreferencePanes/OSXFUSE.prefPane/Contents/_CodeSignature/CodeResources
Password:
cat: /Library/PreferencePanes/OSXFUSE.prefPane/Contents/_CodeSignature/CodeResources: Permission denied

permission denied, I have enabled root, did an su root, su -, sudo su, etc...

always permission denied...

I can do

$ sudo ls -l /Library/PreferencePanes/OSXFUSE.prefPane/Contents/_CodeSignature/CodeResources
-rwxrwxrwx  1 root  wheel  5696  6 Jul 10:38 /Library/PreferencePanes/OSXFUSE.prefPane/Contents/_CodeSignature/CodeResources

I chmoded the file 777 at some point, initially owner had 'rw-' I believe, either way, root, the owner should be able to read the file.

What is going on and what can I do about it.

I also did a chmod 777 on the files before I copied them to /Library.

Also cannot delete them now...