Most flash drives are formatted using the FAT32 filesystem, so it's all you can do to keep files from disappearing on their own. But, that filesystem doesn't have permission bits, so I don't know why it wouldn't let you reset any attributes. It may be using the NTFS, or some other filesystem.
In any event, without any more details I'm left recommending the brute force method: simply reformat the drive. That'll clear any permission bits, file attributes, etc. and blow away any files that may exist. You'll be left with a clean, empty thumbdrive.
It's also possible the supplier had those drives manufactured specifically as a distribution method for those files. Rather than use flash memory, it may be a ROM chip in there instead. It would work the same way for reading the files, but you couldn't ever write to it. If you wanted to distribute the same file to a lot of people, that would be a less expensive way of doing it as ROMs are cheaper than EEPROMs. If that's the case, you may as well just throw it away.
Incidentally, it's highly likely that even if you do clear the thing up, it's not going to have much capacity to it and so will be of little use to you. Because of that, I wouldn't spend too much time on this problem. Especially when new thumbdrives with lots of capacity can be had for anywhere between $5 and $20How do I delete read-only file from flash drive?
just format it like any other drive and all will be gone
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