Problem was . . . ssh was expecting SSH2/protocol 2. So, I used the -oProtocol=1 option on the ssh/scp commands, and it works!!!

You can either manually override it using the above -o option, or change the Protocol in ssh_config(default is 2,1, meaning that version 2 is tried first and falls back to version 1 if 2 is not available, that is why I was getting hosed . . .)

MC