Perfect, that's the answer. Well part 1 anyway. I also needed to remove a CR (^@) from in between every character to get Text::CSV_XS to parse it.

I noticed a surprising thing: vim doesn't show the extra CR's in the original file with the "funny" lead two bytes. Remove them, and vim shows the CR's like this:

D^@A^@R^@K^@0^@1^@D^@G^@B^@B^@H^@1^@D^@,^@1^@5^@.^@5^@2^@.^@1^@3^@6^@.
+^@2^@3^@7^@,^@2^@0^@0^@8^@-^@1^@0^@-^@2^@0^@ ^@1^@9^@:^@0^@0^@:^@0^@8
+^@.^@0^@0^@0^@,^@1^@,^@1^@.^@6^@.^@6^@0^@0^@0^@,^@8^@1^@.^@2^@.^@0^@.
+^@2^@5^@,^@-^@W^@o^@r^@k^@s^@t^@a^@t^@i^@o^@n^@P^@a^@r^@e^@n^@t^@s^@^
+M^@
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