sshd connection woes

[Matthew Wilson <matthewwilson@dsl.pipex.com>]

Greetings list,
I have been having some problems connecting to a Debian woody box via
ssh. I initially set up this machine (let's call it A) with the
linux-server package using dselect.  I was then able to connect to it
from another machine (B) running RedHat 9 and OpenSSH 3.5. 

I then attempted to compile libssl from source to get the shared
libraries (in order to compile some s/w), and it broke!  (I think this
is what broke it... I may have done any other random steps in between
which *actually* broke it...).  I cannot connect from my local machine L
or from B.   I can SSH fine from A to B.   I can ping A from L, and
telnet to port 22.  A and B have dedicated public IPs, while L is behind
NAT.

My sshd config is stock and so is my iptables (i.e. unconfigured)

Stuff I have tried:

apt-get --reinstall install ssh openssl libssl0.9.6
restarted sshd

My ssh sessions logs: 
[root@localhost root]# ssh -vvv my.ip.here
OpenSSH_3.5p1, SSH protocols 1.5/2.0, OpenSSL 0x0090701f
debug1: Reading configuration data /etc/ssh/ssh_config
debug1: Applying options for *
debug1: Rhosts Authentication disabled, originating port will not be
trusted.
debug1: ssh_connect: needpriv 0
debug1: Connecting to 217.159.87.3 [217.159.87.3] port 22.
debug1: Connection established.
debug1: identity file /root/.ssh/identity type -1
debug1: identity file /root/.ssh/id_rsa type -1
debug1: identity file /root/.ssh/id_dsa type -1
 

<output ends, process hangs>

I would very much appreciate any suggestions.  I am a complete debian
newbie and a relative linux newbie, so don't hesitate to mention the
obvious ;-)

thanks
Matthew Wilson.