Cold Fusion http request crashes Xalan

[Travis McCauley]

Hello,
I have a strange problem. I am using xalan D-2.2 to transform 
transcript files of Tibetan language videos. Our project is using a 
Cold Fusion 4.5 application to manage cataloging and workflow issues.

The cold fusion page calls the xalan servlet from a <cfhttp> tag, 
specifying the following attributes:

method="get"
url="http://128.143.78.143/the_rest.../";
port="8080"
The strange thing is, this only crashes xalan if the <cfhttp> request 
is the first request for a xalan page after tomcat starts up. If I 
call the same URL with a browser for the first time it works and 
subsequent <cfhttp> request also work.

Any ideas what might be going on and how I could catch it? I don't 
really understand how the debug options work.

Thanks for any tips.
Cheers,
Travis