From the "For What It's Worth" department:

Our users shared a java file with us, which was very like this post.  In the method that actually output results was this:


               Collection<IChangeSetLinkSummary> linkSummaries = workspaceManager.getChangeSetLinkSummary(changeSets, new SysoutProgressMonitor());
               
                // Collect all of the link handles for the change sets so that we can do one fetch of all of the links
                List<ILinkHandle> linkHandles = new ArrayList<ILinkHandle>();
                for (IChangeSetLinkSummary linkSummary: linkSummaries) {
                    linkHandles.addAll(linkSummary.getLinks());
                }
               
                // Some of the change sets could be attached to the same work item. Although work item handles
                //  do have a unique ID those objects don't implement equals so we use a map of a work item handle
                //  UUID to a work item handle with that UUID.
                HashMap<UUID, IWorkItemHandle> workItemHandles = new HashMap<UUID, IWorkItemHandle>();
                for (Object o: itemManager.fetchCompleteItems(linkHandles, IItemManager.DEFAULT, new SysoutProgressMonitor())) {
                    ILink link = (ILink) o;
                   
                    // Any links that aren't item references are not work item links so discard them now
                    if (link.getTargetRef().isItemReference()) {
                        IItemHandle itemHandle = (IItemHandle) link.getTargetRef().resolve();
                       
                        if (itemHandle instanceof IWorkItemHandle) {
                            workItemHandles.put(itemHandle.getItemId(), (IWorkItemHandle)itemHandle);
                        }
                    }
                }
                // Fetch all of the work items so that we can inspect the approvals
                for (Object item: itemManager.fetchCompleteItems(new ArrayList<IItemHandle>(workItemHandles.values()), IItemManager.DEFAULT, new SysoutProgressMonitor())) {
                    IWorkItem workItem = (IWorkItem)item;
                   
                    System.out.println("[" + workItem.getId() + "] " + workItem.getHTMLSummary().getPlainText());
                   
                }

The test in bold was failing for some of the returned ILink, so I dug a little and found a getComment() method

link.getTargetRef().getComment()

which I used as an else part to that if

                        ......
                        if (itemHandle instanceof IWorkItemHandle) {
                            workItemHandles.put(itemHandle.getItemId(), (IWorkItemHandle)itemHandle);
                        }
                    }
                    else 
                    System.out.println(link.getTargetRef().getComment());

That last System.out.println gave info very like what is displayed in the RTC UI's.   There is also a getExtraInfo() method on the IReference object that in this case provides the PublicURI of the remote change and an ID ( which seems to be constant )